Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside *

It’s been rainy and hot here. Summer. But it’s compounded with the knowledge of all that is burning. The west, when I look at the maps, I see the places and people I love surrounded by fire and flame; then there is the pandemic, COVID going along its merry way mutating and spreading like a spark to dry timber.

This morning started with a poem -- a balm -- from Naomi Shihab Nye, 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.”

Which I’ve read before, and forgotten, and now have come back to, so it feels doubly important.

Then I see on Blackstory1619, a picture of Amelia Boynton, with an Alabama State Trooper standing over her after having been beat unconscious at Selma. And I think of the fire and flame that is torching voting in the US. I wonder of the cowardice of all those “representatives” and if any of those writing these laws have an inkling of what people have gone through to vote; are going through.

“…how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.”

After lunch, the lawn had dried and the breeze was blowing the hot air around, we went out to mow, I do the edging and trim work, Jerry cuts the lawn; it takes less than an hour. It was very humid, but the wind felt good. By the front door I found a dead hummingbird. I didn’t tell Jerry; it would make him sad; sometimes I wield a secret as shield.

“Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside*,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.”

Funerary

 At first, it’s just an outline, a weird pattern on the walk
a perfect fold from the begonia leaf that has at last dropped.
Then a shadow, something on the skylight over the porch
maybe a toy glider that has been carried from the neighbor’s
yard like the Cosmo petals littering the lawn, fallen stars.
But stepping close I see it, the glitter of the web wrapped
about the faded green, the tiny trip-hammer heart stilled, that beak
pointing east, wings silent. In the workings of calamity
it is not much. I touch its ruby throat, wrap the minute
carcass in cloth say a short good-bye and lower it away,
away into a cool grave.