1. Read the poem 

  2. Do your own reflection on it, noting what it inspires in you

  3. Feel free to use your own reflection as your prompt or…

  4. Use the selection of prompts below the poem

  5. Pick one that inspires you and write (feel free to use only one or write several poems using different prompts) or…

  6. Don’t use any of the provided prompts and follow your inspiration from wherever it comes

Kindness 

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 maze 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 is someone 
who journey to the night with plans 
and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness is 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
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/naomi-shihab-nye

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Note: Next Read Around is:
Oct 29, 2021 at 4:00 PM PST

My Thoughts

If you listen to some sources, there is an alarming increase in acts of rudeness and aggressive behavior during the pandemic. Many of these incidents are striking because they highlight the divisiveness over wearing masks or getting vaccinated. The actual uptick in rude behavior may not reach the pandemic proportions that many people would assert. They are newsworthy because they raise hackles. The news does not tend to report everyday acts of kindness which I would guess occur exponentially more often than rudeness. In fact, little acts of kindness may occur so often we do not even notice—someone holds the door open as you go into the store; someone picks up the letter you dropped and hands it to you; someone helps you work the ticket machine at the train station.

Naomi Shihab Nye’s poem, Kindness, suggests that we don’t really know kindness until we have suffered and see the graciousness in simple acts of kindness. In the face of personal loss, or the suffering of others, or the depth of our sorrow, a simple act of kindness, the same act we might offer a cursory thank you for in other moments, can be deeply touching. A helping hand stands out more when we have fallen and a listening ear means more when we feel broken. Nye’s poem offers us a journey through our sorrows and the suffering of the world to befriend kindness. Kindness then becomes a companion on the path, something we encourage in ourselves, reward in the world, and extend to others because we know it is a salve for the soul.

If we personify kindness and think of it as a companion, we can begin to wonder how we might invite it into us and into our world. We can let it shadow us as we travel, see it in action around us, and learn how to call it forth. We can sing its praises and write poetry to befriend kindness and deepen our relationship with it.

Prompt Menu

  1. Use Nye’s opening with another quality or trait (patience, courage, love, etc.) by using the stem sentence, Before you know what X is….

  2. Write about or describe an act of kindness that truly touched you or that made a difference in your life.

  3. Nye lists a variety of things that we must lose or let go of to know kindness. Write aobut what you must lose or let go of to truly embrace kindness (fear, past abuses, etc). Or, on the flip side, what must you truly embrace (compassion, courage) to express more kindness (the courage to be kind) .

  4. Describe a time when you saw someone suffering, hurt, or killed and you realized that it could have been you. Or descibe how it impacted you, or heighlighted something important (a lesson, or a value) that you want to live more completely.

  5. Use the stem sentence, The deepest thing inside… and write whatever flows out from there.

  6. Personify kindness; write about its history and what inspired it to act as it does. Or write an ode to kindness.

  7. As usual, write about anything else from the poem or life that inspires you