The starting line of kindness can be anywhere.
It can begin with good intentions, or boredom, or practical notions.
An overheard word at the bus stop, a dropped grocery bag,
A strange creature limping, a moment’s silence at the hospital room –
All are spurs for kindness. Or they are not.
Kindness can form, like mold, on the edge of a grudge.
A string of unkindnesses, no matter how long,
will admit of its opposite, in a kind of perverse beauty of asymmetry.
The three-time murderer, doing fifty-five to life,
can create the very next kindness of our planet earth.
None of this is fair. None of it makes sense.
Kindness carries its own clock and casts its own shadow.
The world does not know kindness, until it does,
Until the world meets kindness over by the docks and they kiss,
And suddenly the world understands
That it had not been home until now.