March

-

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 it til your voice

catches the thread of all sorrows 

and you see the size of the cloth. 

-- excerpt from "Kindness" by Naomi Shihab Nye


______


I am catching the threads - 

in the sweet morning air, 

in the hollow shells buried on the shoreline,

from the lungs of loved ones, 

in the pulse that bulges beneath my fingertips. 


I am catching the threads - 

pinching them tight,

pulling them taught, 

tethering them

to my writings of gratitude,

to my visions of the sun and bodies of water,

to my promises of weaving

this sacred pattern. 


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