Kindness

(Crowd by Teri Hamilton - found here)

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.

~Naomi Shihab Nye