Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Kindness

“I expect to pass through life but once. If therefore there be any kindness I can show...let me do it now.” 

― William Penn

Placard for kindness, at the People's Climate March (2017).

“Guard well within yourself that treasure, kindness. Know how to give without hesitation, how to lose without regret, how to acquire without meanness.” 

― George Sand

"The magic in this world seems to work in whispers and small kindnesses.” 

― Charles de Lint

“In what terms should we think of these beings, nonhuman yet possessing so very many human-like characteristics? How should we treat them? Surely we should treat them with the same consideration and kindness as we show to other humans; and as we recognize human rights, so too should we recognize the rights of the great apes? Yes.” 

― Jane Goodall

Jane Goodall spent decades studying chimpanzees . . .
From article about National Geographic Documentary "Jane"
11/7/2017 by Jordan Riefe. Photo Courtesy of Goodall Institute. 

Midweek Motif ~ Kindness

• To be "kind" (n) is "to be related."
• To "be kind" (adv) is "to treat each other as lovingly as we would like to be treated."

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These two meanings may depend upon each other, as we tend to be kinder toward those with whom we sense a relationship. 
Or is it the opposite?

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Your Challenge: In a new poem, show us how you know/imagine kindness and its possibility.

Kindness by Naomi Shihab Nye

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 as the other deepest thing. 
You must wake up with 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 gaze at 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.

Kindness by Sylvia Plath

Kindness glides about my house.

Dame Kindness, she is so nice!

The blue and red jewels of her rings smoke

In the windows, the mirrors

Are filling with smiles.

What is so real as the cry of a child?

A rabbit's cry may be wilder

But it has no soul.

Sugar can cure everything, so Kindness says.

Sugar is a necessary fluid,

Its crystals a little poultice.

O kindness, kindness

Sweetly picking up pieces!

My Japanese silks, desperate butterflies,

May be pinned any minute, anesthetized.

And here you come, with a cup of tea

Wreathed in steam.

The blood jet is poetry,

There is no stopping it.

You hand me two children, two roses.

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

when sunlight falls through leaves

across honed knives on the table.

If we can see it push shadows

aside, growing closer, are we less

broken? A barometer, temperature

gauge, a ruler in minus fractions

& pedigrees, a thingmajig,

a probe with an all-seeing eye,

what do we need to measure

kindness, every unheld breath,

every unkind leapyear?

Sometimes a sober voice is enough

to calm the waters & drive away

the false witnesses, saying, Look,

here are the broken treaties Beauty

brought to us earthbound sentinels.

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

Next week Sumana’s Midweek Motif will be ~ Neighbors )

Poets United Midweek Motif ~ Poetry about the Body

    “The human body is the best picture of the human soul.” — Ludwig Wittgenstein

SOURCE

“My relationship with my body has changed. I used to consider it as a servant who should obey, function, give pleasure. In sickness you realize that you are not the boss. It is the other way round.” — Federico Fellini

         

Midweek Motif ~ Poetry about the Body

How do we view the image of our body? Do we see it with the eye of the media / advertisement / anyone apart from our own self or is it I am seeing my own body?

The artists of both ancient and modern world paid great homage to the human body in their art and sculpture. No less, the modern writers, in their words.


Sing about this human body.

Here is Walt Whitman in his nine part poem I Sing the Body Electric:

1        

I sing the body electric, 

The armies of those I love engirth me and I engirth them, 

They will not let me off till I go with them, respond to them, 

And discorrupt them, and charge them full with the charge of the soul. 

               

Was it doubted that those who corrupt their own bodies conceal themselves? 

And if those who defile the living are as bad as they who defile the dead? 

And if the body does not do fully as much as the soul? 

And if the body were not the soul, what is the soul? 

2 

The love of the body of man or woman balks account, the body itself balks account, 

That of the male is perfect, and that of the female is perfect. 

The expression of the face balks account, 

But the expression of a well-made man appears not only in his face, 

It is in his limbs and joints also, it is curiously in the joints of his hips and wrists, 

It is in his walk, the carriage of his neck, the flex of his waist and knees, dress does not hide him, 

The strong sweet quality he has strikes through the cotton and broadcloth, 

To see him pass conveys as much as the best poem, perhaps more, 

You linger to see his back, and the back of his neck and shoulder-side. 

The sprawl and fulness of babes, the bosoms and heads of women, the folds of their dress, their style as we pass in the street, the contour of their shape downwards, 

The swimmer naked in the swimming-bath, seen as he swims through the transparent green-shine, or lies with his face up and rolls silently to and fro in the heave of the water, 

The bending forward and backward of rowers in row-boats, the horseman in his saddle, 

Girls, mothers, house-keepers, in all their performances, 

The group of laborers seated at noon-time with their open dinner-kettles, and their wives waiting, 

The female soothing a child, the farmer’s daughter in the garden or cow-yard, 

The young fellow hoeing corn, the sleigh-driver driving his six horses through the crowd, 

The wrestle of wrestlers, two apprentice-boys, quite grown, lusty, good-natured, native-born, out on the vacant lot at sun-down after work, 

The coats and caps thrown down, the embrace of love and resistance, 

The upper-hold and under-hold, the hair rumpled over and blinding the eyes; 

The march of firemen in their own costumes, the play of masculine muscle through clean-setting trowsers and waist-straps, 

The slow return from the fire, the pause when the bell strikes suddenly again, and the listening on the alert, 

The natural, perfect, varied attitudes, the bent head, the curv’d neck and the counting; 

Such-like I love—I loosen myself, pass freely, am at the mother’s breast with the little child, 

Swim with the swimmers, wrestle with wrestlers, march in line with the firemen, and pause, listen, count. 

                             (Rest of the poem is here)

Here are some links to some wonderful poetry on the theme:

Old Man Leaves Party by Mark Strand  

 My Mother’s Body by Marge Piercy

Anodyne by Yusef Komunyakaa

homage to my hips by Lucille Cliffton

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

                (Next week Susan’s Midweek Motif will be ~ Psyche / Soul)