We could attribute many things under the Title:
THINGS I COULD BE CONVICTED FOR. . .
Here’s one: IF KINDNESS WERE A CRIME, WOULD YOU BE CONVICTED GUILTY
Forget about the BIG KINDNESSES, how about focusing on some SMALL KINDNESSES. . .
Danusha LamérisI’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.”
It’s downright impolite how we’ve become at being polite. . . .
“TAKE CARE,”
she yelled at my back
as I stepped into a cold morning
that would have made the unshaken
flakes in a snow globe shudder
“TAKE CARE,” I muttered, “YES!”
TAKE CARE to the Soup kitchen
TAKE CARE to the homeless shelter
TAKE CARE to the prisons of Innocents
TAKE CARE to the Church Closings
TAKE CARE to the one star Nursing Homes
TAKE CARE to the Battered Women’s Shelters
TAKE CARE where you Go but never thought you’d Be
TAKE CARE
And when you’re done TAKING CARE
and there’s none left
Go to that dark place no one knows you know
And wait. Wait. WAIT for some yet known One
to TAKE CARE to you