santos scribes

The truth of the poem startled me when I discover it

layered up there with the brilliant prose and the heart-aching imagery

It feels like an intruder: seated (settled really) in a darkened room of my own making

it’s true though there is inherent sadness woven deeply into kindness, isn’t there?

It’s the reason I ask my children to be kind instead of nice.

Nice feels calculated & not “enough” and holds less sustenance somehow

But Kindness, I realize- is born from a different taste of place.

A byproduct (perhaps) of life-altering pain; the broken branches left behind by an unconscionable storm

Poet, Naomi Shihab Nye might be calling what I call sadness, ‘sorrow’ (in her poem “Kindness”) and these words (sadness & sorrow) feel lifetimes apart too.

Sorrow feels deep like a bottomless hole and more compassionate than sadness has the capacities to be

Sorrow is ancient and lost, brooding grief’s, next of kin.     

It was in the ways Shihab Nye wrote the poem

Or maybe in the way my beloved writing sister read it, either way the poem called Kindness is sorrowful, and I gather that is the point, is most often the point of poetry

—buried seeds, blooming Iris— it is the poet who knows both the unfortunate truths, the kindness of the purpling petals, the sweetened sorrow of all those wilted tomorrows

about this writing

this writing is a response poem to Naomi Shihab Nye poem Kindness. thanks for reading ! xo, Stephanie