Small Kindesses: Poems for Prison
’m picking poems right now for a class I’m holding in a men’s prison in two weeks. Picking poems is one of my favorite part of this wild writing practice I teach, where we write to a poetry prompt, quickly and steadily, pen not leaving the page. I’m pretty sure it works for anyone who is receptive to it, and these men are receptive. My friend and student, Beth Witrogen, has been holding Buddhist dharma and Chi Gong classes there for years. I invited myself along, she said yes (thank you Beth!) I’m going through security hoops now—but I have no criminal record I know of so I’m pretty sure I’ll get approved.
What poems do you pick for incarcerated humans serving life sentences? Not those that extoll nature, an outside they might never see again. Not sensual pleasures. Not everyday activities like shopping or mowing the lawn. Even gratitude… I would bet many of these men have developed their spiritual lives in prison but I’m not the messenger of gratitude for them.
I think I’ve settled on kindness, because kindness is possible any moment of any day. So one poem I’ll be using is Danusha Lamaeris’ glorious “Small Kindnesses”.
There’s another reason I’m choosing this poem. It’s this world we are living in—this upside down world that the regime is enforcing on us. When I see videos of ICE raids, I’m livid. And scared.
I have friends who are system changers, whose work really is changing the world. How I admire them! But I’m not that. I work on a small scale. Kindness is something I know about. Teaching a class in a prison is something I can do. And this is really what I want to say: every act of kindness matters. Every single one. It proves to yourself you are not them. It shows others they are not alone. It shows us our humanity.
Your energy reverberates out into the world and makes this world better. We have not lost what matters most.
*****
Small Kindnesses
by Danish Lameris
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.”
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