Three things in human life are important. The first is to be kind. The second is to be kind. And the third is to be kind.
~ Henry James
It is you who smooths the quilt over
my sleep-shards, you
who do not yet live here,
but blaze silently.
•
My hand in this injury, if not
in its stitching.
Where do I look, if not
always to escape?
•
Compassion’s small font: words folded back
or care-drafted.
Needlekind, brine, witness
to both wound and cure.
•
Patiently, sitting on hospice bed-
edge, you adjust
the leaky cannula
tune its little reed.
•
Holding – not your all, yet, though you rest
your head against
mine – space. Be patient. Trust
stirring in the bud.
•
Triage dreams: sirens, emergencies
ordered, borders
unsealed. Always alone
when pain climbs to ten.
•
The one who lost the most gives away
more. A giving
like soap to blade, salvaged
hope, ocean-rope, gauze.
•
When you are in danger, who am I
with such small gifts:
a poultice of godless
prayer, mute infusion.
•
Obscure calculus: abacus beads
falling like teeth.
And from your own torn mouth:
consolation, calm.
•
The way that, when you knew, you didn’t
break me again,
instead, let fragile light
settle while I spoke.
•
Still more? Like bonus steak knives, this love:
where to put it?
Let me sweep the crumbs off
the table. Let me.
•
You know how to hold space: strange physics
with me, without
need, demand: where mourning
ebbs, lives next to love.
•
All threads in a weave of kin, all roots
that take you down
to glasswords sandbroken
ground small beyond sound.
•
Where all tongues lose their language, all hands
let go, forget
force, put down their cudgels –
Where all that divides
us calculates its losses and I
am made to learn
grace, in the place silence
breaks, bruises open
dark sails – I want to know one thing, try
to hold it, try
again, to be kind, to
be kind, to be kind.