Ran into the poem below on Facebook, where a friend had posted it. Did not know of this poet, Danusha Laméris, until now. She’s a keeper and winner, for sure.
What do we do with such illuminations? Read ’em and weep? Read ’em and smile? Read ’em and reflect on how they can be applied, if there’s such a thing as applied poetry, to our daily lives?
Gods know we are still tribal, even if, as the poet says, we are “So far / from tribe and fire.” We huddle in our own, old prejudices, I mean, and when we meet others we growl or bite.
Isn’t this especially true, these days, of politics?
Better to lavish on each other, however transient these exchanges, a smile, a helping hand? Even when we suspect the other guy/gal is crazy? As crazy as we are ourselves?
Small Kindnesses
by Danusha Laméris
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.”
