Poets United Midweek Motif ~ The Kindness of Strangers

“There are billions of us and that's too many. Nobody knows anyone. Strangers come and violate you. Strangers come and cut your heart out. 
Strangers come and take your blood. ” 
― Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

"How often are the perpetrators of hate-crimes discovered to be 
self-loathing?  Valued individuals do not strike out 
against strangers. "
 --Harvey Fierstein

“We encounter God in the face of a stranger."― Jonathan Sacks

Photo: Bettmann/Getty Images

"A New Book Says You Should Talk to Strangers. 

"Counterpoint says: No."  ~ by Alice Robb  

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Midweek Motif ~ The Kindness 
of Strangers

2 years ago, I read in The Guardian: 

There’s a reason Tennessee Williams wrote about the kindness of strangers; there’s a reason the phrase has entered the cultural lexicon. The kindness of strangers can turn a bad day good, or give hope, or change lives, or more banally, make sure we’re not late to something, give our legs a rest on the bus home. I try to be kind to strangers. Strangers are kind to me. In north London a few weeks ago, a man handed me a piece of paper with a smile on it; a woman let me use her phone, in the rain, entirely lost.  ~Hannah Jane Parkinson

The rest of the article is about benevolent meetings in a bar and the relationships that grew from them. 

I also have had fine interactions with strangers in crowds and trains and libraries. And then there are the other meetings ~ not so kind and sometimes dangerous.  In fact, the irony of the phrase from Tennessee Williams is that Blanche says this to a man who is leading her to an asylum. It's sad that social structures that used to uphold her society are eroded and no longer sustaining.   Sigh.   Is that happening around us today?

Your Challenge:  Write a new poem that draws attention to the kindness of strangers.

These
Strangers in a foreign World

by Emily
Dickinson

These
Strangers, in a foreign World,

Protection
asked of me --

Befriend
them, lest Yourself in Heaven

Be found a
Refugee --


Kindness

BY YUSEF
KOMUNYAKAA

For Carol Rigolot

When deeds splay before us

precious as gold & unused chances

stripped from the whine-bone,

we know the moment kindheartedness

walks in. Each praise be

echoes us back as the years uncount

themselves, eating salt. Though blood

first shaped us on the climbing wheel,

the human mind lit by the savanna’s

ice star & thistle rose,

your knowing gaze enters a room

& opens the day,

saying we were made for fun.

Even the bedazzled brute knows

(Read the rest HERE)


Kindness

Naomi Shihab Nye, 1952

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.



. . . . (Read the rest HERE.)





Cover
of The Phantom
Stranger (Jan. 2013) #4. 

 Art by Brent Anderson.


(Next week, Sumana's Midweek Motif will be MIRROR.)


Please share your new poem using Mr. Linky below and visit others
in the spirit of the community—