Small Kindnesses

Christine Lowther photo

SMALL KINDNESSES

I’ve been thinking about the way, when you walk
down a crowded aisle, people pull in their legs
to let you by. Or how strangers still say “bless you”
when someone sneezes, a leftover
from the Bubonic plague. “Don’t die,” we are saying.

And sometimes, when you spill lemons
from your grocery bag, someone else will help you
pick them up. Mostly, we don’t want to harm each other.

We want to be handed our cup of coffee hot,
and to say thank you to the person handing it. To smile
at them and for them to smile back. For the waitress
to call us honey when she sets down the bowl of clam chowder,
and for the driver in the red pick-up truck to let us pass.

We have so little of each other, now. So far
from tribe and fire. Only these brief moments of exchange.
What if they are the true dwelling of the holy, these
fleeting temples we make together when we say, “Here,
have my seat,” “Go ahead — you first,” “I like your hat.”

- Danusha Lameris

Ms Lameris is an award-winning poet who served as Poet Laureate of Santa Cruz County from 2018 to 2020. I came across this wonderful poem and thought about how kindness - those small daily kindnesses we don't think much about - are scattered across our days like sunshine. Small interactions that warm our hearts bring out the very best of what it is to be a human in this world, and make us feel our kinship with those around us.

I am a fan, (as you may have noticed) of the ordinary joys and comforts in life. I have never had much in the way of materialism, never wanted it, but I am rich in the simple pleasures, the ordinary joys, the small daily kindnesses we encounter as we go about our days.

I happened upon this next poem from a favourite poet of mine - a very inspiring woman - Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, and thought it might spark some ideas. Rosemerry lost her sixteen year old son to suicide in 2022. Her poems after his death are inspiring, full of deep love.

After Years of Pretending I Could Do It All

I said yes today when Linda asked
if I’d like a nutritious drink to go.
You’ll need the protein, she said, as she slipped
the bottle into a paper bag. I said yes
when she offered to bring me food later.
Said yes when she offered to bring me wine.
And when Steve said, Let’s go outside,
I said yes. Yes as he showed me the best spot
to sit to face east in the morning. Yes
as he showed me the place to face west.
And later when Joan asked if she could hold me—
one palm to my chest, one palm to my back,
her forehead touched to my shoulder—
I said yes. I said yes as she helped me
to carry boxes and bags. Said yes
as she handed me water. I, the queen of no,
said yes. I, who have thought I could do it
alone, I who desperately want to not be a burden,
I who have longed for control,
I who have made a small cell out of no
said yes and felt the doors of reluctance
swing open then fall off their hinges then
dissolve into gratefulness. How long
have I thought I needed to do this alone?
How long have I clung to this island
of separateness? How sweet
it tastes, this yes. Like chocolate,
with thirty grams of protein no less.
Like pure water, offered in a small white cup,
something I need to live. Something I’m made of.

~ Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer


So there you go. Let's dig deep and see what comes up. Let's link our poems and visit our friends. The linky stays active till Sunday evening.

Talk/Conversation

 

~ Conversation ~

Conversation by Joni Mitchell

Most interesting to me is what conversation reveals about the characters involved.  Conversation can be easy or hard, direct or indirect, one-sided or two-sided or multi-dimensional.   

What interests you?  Give us a conversation or describe one.  Enjoy!

Some examples: 

A Time to Talk

By Robert Frost

When a friend calls to me from the road
And slows his horse to a meaning walk,
I don’t stand still and look around
On all the hills I haven’t hoed,
And shout from where I am, What is it?
No, not as there is a time to talk.
I thrust my hoe in the mellow ground,
Blade-end up and five feet tall,
And plod: I go up to the stone wall
For a friendly visit.

The Death of the Hired Man

By Robert Frost

Mary sat musing on the lamp-flame at the table

Waiting for Warren. When she heard his step,

She ran on tip-toe down the darkened passage

To meet him in the doorway with the news

And put him on his guard. ‘Silas is back.’

She pushed him outward with her through the door

And shut it after her. ‘Be kind,’ she said.

She took the market things from Warren’s arms

And set them on the porch, then drew him down

To sit beside her on the wooden steps.

‘When was I ever anything but kind to him?

But I’ll not have the fellow back,’ he said.

‘I told him so last haying, didn’t I?

If he left then, I said, that ended it.

What good is he? Who else will harbor him

At his age for the little he can do?

What help he is there’s no depending on.

Off he goes always when I need him most.

He thinks he ought to earn a little pay,

Enough at least to buy tobacco with,

So he won’t have to beg and be beholden.

“All right,” I say, “I can’t afford to pay

Any fixed wages, though I wish I could.”

“Someone else can.” “Then someone else will have to.”

I shouldn’t mind his bettering himself

If that was what it was. You can be certain,

When he begins like that, there’s someone at him

Trying to coax him off with pocket-money,—

In haying time, when any help is scarce.

In winter he comes back to us. I’m done.’

‘Sh! not so loud: he’ll hear you,’ Mary said.

. . . . 

(Read the rest HERE.)

Death is a Dialogue between

By Emily Dickinson

 Death is a Dialogue between
The Spirit and the Dust.
"Dissolve" says Death -- The Spirit "Sir
I have another Trust" --

Death doubts it -- Argues from the Ground --
The Spirit turns away
Just laying off for evidence
An Overcoat of Clay.

💛💛💛

Please link one poem that is your response to this prompt.  

After you link your poem, please visit others,

and

Don't forget to include this link in your post.

Open Link

 

Source

It’s a no prompt day again, friends. Please write a poem of your choice. You might also post an old one.

 

15^th August, our Independence Day is around the corner. It’s good to see how people come together to celebrate the occasion with the fervor of freedom. My country is now in a mood of celebration. I pray for happiness and peace all around the world.

 

Let me celebrate the occasion in advance with this poem of Rabindranath Tagore who passed away six years before our country gained independence:

 

Gitanjali 35

(Where the Mind Is Without Fear)

 

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high;

   Where knowledge is free;

   Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls;

   Where words come out from the depth of truth;

   Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;

   Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit;

   Where the mind is led forward by thee into ever-widening thought and action

   Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.

 

Please share your poem using Mr. Linky below and visit others in the spirit of the community. Please include this link in your post.

Eyes

 

source

What do you notice about a person when you first meet them?  Do you notice their height?  Their hair? Their clothing style?    The way they talk? Or their EYES?

When I first meet a person, notice their eyes. I think one can tell a lot about a person by their eyes?

Are they warm eyes?  Or cold eyes?  Do the eyes seem dead?  Do they dance?  

For you, what is the importance of YOUR eyes?

What can you tell about a person from THEIR eyes?

This week I would like you to write a poem that includes eyes.

Perhaps write about a particular person you know with expressive eyes, cold eyes, warm eyes, etc.

Perhaps write about something you see with your own eyes.

What do you hope that your eyes express?

Here are a few poems about eyes:

The Eye by Kahlil Gibran

Your Eyes are Blue by Gustavo Adolfo Becquer (1836-1870)

The Curve of Your Eyes by Paul Eluard

Anyway, think about EYES, and write a poem.  Wherever the theme takes you is fine.

And please, after you have written your poem and posted it on Mr. Linky, visit the poems of other poets who share their words. We all like visits as much as you so.

Mr. Linky will close on Sunday night at 8 p.m Eastern Time!

HOPE - "The Hardest Love We Carry"

 

"Hope is the hardest love we carry."

Recently, I was so struck by this quote from a poem by Jane Hirshfield that I wanted to share it with you. In these times when there is so much outrageous suffering all over the world, our hearts are heavy with the wrongness of it. It struck me, when I read her words, that it is because of love that we are hurting - love for this beautiful planet and all of our fellow beings -  Mother Earth showering us with starry skies and midnight moons even as the bombs are dropping and people whose mental faculties are alarming are making hugely consequential decisions, based on nothing at all.

Sigh.

Anyway, let's look at the two poems of inspiration. 

Hope and Love
by Jane Hirshfield

All winter
the blue heron
slept among the horses.
I do not know
the custom of herons,
do not know
if the solitary habit
is their way,
or if he listened for
some missing one—
not knowing even
that was what he did—
in the blowing
sounds in the dark,
I know that
hope is the hardest
love we carry.
He slept
with his long neck
folded, like a letter
put away.

That "long neck folded, like a letter put away" is so beautiful.

Hope is indeed hard to carry these days. And yet without it, how can we go on? Let's contemplate it today, in whatever way feels right to you. It might be you are having trouble holding onto hope; it might be that you have found ways to carry it, despite the evening news (which is more alarming than new, and the warring is just way too old.) 

Ada Limon is another poet whose message resonates with me. Let's see what Ms Limon has to say.

This heron was blending into the rocks,
but I was amazed she landed so close to me.

The Great Blue Heron of Dunbar Road
by Ada Limón

That we might walk out into the woods together,
and afterwards make toast
in our sock feet, still damp from the fern’s
wet grasp, the spiky needles stuck to our
legs, that’s all I wanted, the dog in the mix,
jam sometimes, but not always. But somehow,
I’ve stopped praising you. How the valley
when you first see it—the small roads back
to your youth—is so painfully pretty at first,
then, after a month of black coffee, it’s just
another place your bullish brain exists, bothered
by itself and how hurtful human life can be.
Isn’t that how it is? You wake up some days
full of crow and shine, and then someone
has put engine coolant in the medicine
on another continent and not even crying
helps cure the idea of purposeful poison.
What kind of woman am I? What kind of man?
I’m thinking of the way my stepdad got sober,
how he never told us, just stopped drinking
and sat for a long time in the low folding chair
on the Bermuda grass reading and sometimes
soaking up the sun like he was the story’s only
subject. When he drove me to school, we decided
it would be a good day, if we saw the blue heron
in the algae-covered pond next to the road,
so that if we didn’t see it, I’d be upset. Then,
he began to lie. To tell me he’d seen it when
he hadn’t, or to suppose that it had just
taken off when we rounded the corner in
the gray car that somehow still ran, and I
would lie, too, for him. I’d say I saw it.
Heard the whoosh of wings over us.
That’s the real truth. What we told each other
to help us through the day: the great blue heron
was there, even when the pond dried up,
or froze over; it was there because it had to be.
Just now, I felt like I wanted to be alone
for a long time, in a folding chair on the lawn
with all my private agonies, but then I saw you
and the way you’re hunching over your work
like a puzzle, and I think even if I fail at everything,
I still want to point out the heron like I was taught,
still want to slow the car down to see the thing
that makes it all better, the invisible gift,
what we see when we stare long enough into nothing.

Wow. "What kind of woman am I?" A lucky one, in my case, because, often, when I raise my eyes from the keyboard and look up, I will see one or sometimes two herons flying over, like skinny matrons with their purses tucked under their arms, circling, then perching, astonishingly, on a slight and bending topmost cedar branch one would think would not hold their weight. A gift, what we see when we raise our eyes from the screen full of horrors and gaze at the clear blue sky.

Where do your hopes lie? How do you hold on to it in the maddest world we have ever known? My method lies in Ada Limon's closing lines: seeing those gifts, either around us or in memory, to "see the thing that makes it all better."

The link is live until 8 p.m. on Sunday. Please visit others in the spirit of community. We need each others' support these days. Also, the team has noticed that you enjoy open links, so we will continue to offer one open link a month, each of us hosting in turn. Yay!

Mathematics!?

 

~ counting, measuring, 

AND FIGURING ~

Source

What adds up?  What circles or squares?  What multiplies?  or subtracts?  or divides?  What parallels?  What symmetry or lack of it shapes the world?  What's the mathematics of awe?

Today's prompt: Use mathematical terms and images to poeticize an aspect of life or experience.

💛💛💛

EXAMPLES

New Math

By Nikki Grimes

Up till now,

the math of my life

has been pretty simple:

friends

plus family

plus sports.

What more

could I ask for, right?

But lately,

my outside has been changing

and my inside keeps telling me

more is on the way.

Trouble is,

I'm not sure

I'm ready.

The Tyger

By William Blake

Tyger Tyger, burning bright, 

In the forests of the night; 

What immortal hand or eye, 

Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies. 

Burnt the fire of thine eyes?

On what wings dare he aspire?

What the hand, dare seize the fire?

. . . . 

(Read the rest HERE.)

NUMBERS

By Mary Cornish

I like the generosity of numbers.

The way, for example,

they are willing to count

anything or anyone:

two pickles, one door to the room,

eight dancers dressed as swans.

I like the domesticity of addition—

add two cups of milk and stir—

the sense of plenty: six plums

on the ground, three more

falling from the tree.

. . . . 

(Read the rest HERE.)

Arithmetic by Carl Sandburg Next

Arithmetic is where numbers fly like pigeons in and out of your head. Arithmetic tells you how many you lose or win if you know how many     you had before you lost or won. Arithmetic is seven eleven all good children go to heaven--     or five six bundle of sticks. Arithmetic is numbers you squeeze from your head to your hand         to your pencil to your paper till you get the answer. . . . .  (Read the rest HERE.)  💛💛💛 Please link one poem that is your response to this prompt.   After you link your poem, please visit others, and Don't forget to include this link in your post.