Paul’s Reviews > A History of Kindness > Status Update

“Distance Not Time”: “I want to be more than one brief life / that will become frail, but rather a journey / over plains, glaciers, and oceans, / with people whose language / has no past tense, so we forgive / and continue to tell happy stories / of where we have traveled / beyond this place… So now I need you to know the mystery, / that neither of these grow here, / not in this place.” (63)

“I think all this wile I am stopped, / waiting for an old turtle to cross the road. / She carries her known past / in the amazing design of shell, / the claws, a being all whole and unbroken, / She is so old the moss grows on her back. / All this while in the distance waiting.” (57)

“But another power swallows us now. / It steals hearts and souls. Then more. / It steals the mind. My friend said of our present lives, / a mind is a terrible thing to steal.” (49)

“They still loved life, / so why don’t you?” (52)

“Power eats the world. / It swallows the waters / that come out of earth.” (47)

“The old ones knew true riches: / each plant, each stone, all the creeks, / human tributaries, / the story of what transpired/ in every place, / and now what has happened there.” (48)

“I know prayers rise with smoke / the way some people / are so perfectly uplifted / from their first roots. / But when this life of trying is finally over, / bring to my bed a small branch / smelling of green forest, / the melting pure water of snow, / these mysteries discovered / one more time.” (32)

“It’s the largest organ of the body and I wish / I could tell you what it was to lose so much of it… just like the underground strands of communication / from tree to tree.” 39)

“It is hard for some to know / the world is a living being. / They live with forgotten truth / replaced with belief.” (26) “You can weep over such things / as lost love, or the padding of loved ones, / but always remember those birds, the bison, / their grief, too, and how the land hurts / in more chambers than one small heart / may ever hold.” (27)

“The hands have their reasons / unknown to the heart, / a needed touch, / the kindness of another skin. // The fingers have their own aims, / to make beauty, to touch softly / something to live by.” (22)

“A human does throw off the bonds if she can, if she tries, if it’s possible. / The body is so finely a miracle of its own, created of the elements / of anything that lived on earth / where everything that was / still is.” (6)

“But the red part I recall the most / had to do with generosity, and then / our giving up the taken land and forest / to those who wanted it so. / We parted with our clothing, / our families, and on our way / we left the red farewell / of a blood trail along the land / we walked, / writing that became / the book coming after us / with words of truth.” (4)