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.

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.



-Naomi Shihab Nye