The Living Poetry Project: Part 14

Poetry Everywhere: “One Boy Told Me” by Naomi Shihab Nye

It is said that Toni Morrison writes her novels in an attempt to define love. It might be true that every writer finds the abstraction of their obsession to make real through concrete imagery–like a cat bringing a bird to your door–here is love.

If I were to name the abstraction I write for, it would be kindness. Naomi Shihab Nye has a great poem entitled kindness. I think in many ways I shape my poetry collections to the movements in this poem:

Kindness

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.
Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.
Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters and purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
it is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.

I was lucky to read at the first open mic at Butler’s Coffee House. This event was organized by local writers and literacy advocates Rod Williams and Kevin Smith. The reading included the talents of Gary Helm, Rod Williams, Sheryl Dawson, Wayne Slater-Lunsford, “Storyteller” John McGee, Pat Alexander, Kevin Burton Smith, and Charles Hood. Word AV now has a regular slot at Butler’s Coffee, the fourth Friday of each month.  That means we’ll be back on Feb. 24th, 7:00 – 9:00 pm, so those in the Antelope Valley, please save the date.

Word AV is an amazing organization that was created out of necessity because all funding was pulled from the library literacy program. Word AV is a creation of pure kindness.

For the Butler’s poetry reading, I wrapped fifty of the poem “Kindness” in red bows to give as a gift to the audience–an incredible kind group of listeners that included my son and his little friends. To my delight,  almost every poem was gone by the end of the event.  It is wonderful to think there is more “Kindness” in the world because a poem was given.  Many thanks to Naomi Shihab Nye and Word AV for their kindness.

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