A Story and a Poem

My twin brother and I email each other a lot. He sends me haikus. I send him photos. The other day I sent him this photo of a Townsend Warbler eating bugs off of our kale. I took the pic through the window, so it's not great, but I thought he'd enjoy it.

He replied with two haikus he had recently written about sparrows.

Sparrows never read

Darwin, but still fight for food

world of survival

On our strange planet

even the sweet birds don't live

together in peace

 

That started a conversation about competition. I asked him why there has to be competition even in times of abundance.  He blamed it on our current president and we had a good laugh about that. His language was more colorful than that, referring to him as the abominable shithead, but we went on contemplating why we are the way we are. Why can't we be kinder? Why is "survival of the fittest" the undercurrent to all life? 

 

Then I remembered a poem I had saved  after finding it a few years ago. It's called Small Kindnesses by Danusha Lameris. I sent it to Michael.

 

I’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.”

My brother was so surprised that I had sent him this poem. He wrote that he and his wife Kim know the author. She is the Poet Laureate of Santa Cruz. She and Kim enjoy some gatherings together. So, Michael wrote the author to tell her that I had sent him this poem. Her reply was so lovely. (Of course it was. She is the author of this poem!)  She wrote that she always loves when this poem brings some solace. And then she wrote, "Love to you and Kim... and to Robin..."

Can you imagine what that meant to me? This poem that I've been loving for years, the author wrote my name and sent me love. In this time of pandemic it made my heart soar in a way that it hasn't for quite a while. 

So that's my story and Danusha Lameris's poem.

"... Go ahead--you first, "I like your hat."