Blooming

I walked home with Jerry’s house plant on the day of his thrown together estate sale. So random – so messy – feeling out of sorts over his sudden death – a good neighbor no more. And now just weeks later, his plant blooms in our home during this Thanksgiving week. While his current view from heaven may all be in bloom, our view is often limited. And yet – there is blooming all about – especially is we have the eyes to see it.

This poem “Small Kindness” reminds of those needed daily blooms.

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.”
+ Danusha Laméris