Naomi Shihab Nye is one of my favorite contemporary poets. Here her poem, “Kindness,” is offered as an oral presentation by the author and I will offer the text following a few words. The poem is elegant and profound with its utmost simplicity, letting me appreciate how kindness is offered in the things which we take for granted. It is the kindness afforded by life itself, often through other people, which we will not miss until we lose them or are faced with their loss. And I’m saddened to reflect back on missed opportunities to offer this kindness and failed to appreciate when it was being proffered to me.

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,                    5
   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                         10

   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  15
   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.           20
 
   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                 25
   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 mail letters and purchase bread,
   only kindness that raises its head                 30
   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.