A Writer's Inbox

I get a weekly email from my bread guy. During COVID lock down Cress Springs Bakery delivered to homes in Mount Horeb and Madison. Every Tuesday he would send out a link to order goods. Along with updates on breads and delivery, he would share a poem.  More often than not I didn't know the poet. Always the poem resonated with me. During this winter her started up delivery again and in came the poems to my inbox. The one he sent out this week was Small Kindnesses. 

With the crisis in Ukraine, I explored ways I could help the people of Ukraine.  Parker J Palmer posted a list of researched organizations that we could support in various ways. (Check out his Facebook page). I decided to subscribe to The Kyiv Independent newspaper.  So now I get the daily Kyiv Independent in my inbox.  

And now this blog of mine is in your inbox.  Thank you for the read. (And, I like your hat). 

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 Laméris