How is it that people being ordinarily moral cause
universal suffering? I have been the recipient of
those looks implying I hold all real virtue in the room
and, frightened, I excused myself by running in
terror through any open door I could find. Indifference
to the fate of self is one way to seek the welfare of others.
Another is to challenge the pride that tends to grow
when in the midst of a group. What is rare, not at all
normal or to be expected, if found, should make things
easier. At least that is what I have been told. How can
the words of a poem be sinful, as in missing the mark,
while alleviating the suffering of another? So many
point their fingers at the greatest immorality of society
without any sense of ought or thou shalt. Their versions
of harmony come before me bland and without reason.
Give me instead a note from a daughter thanking me
for taking her out to lunch or to live again the morning
when I lay on the floor with a baby resting and drowsing
on my chest as I rubbed her back, both of us tired from
waking before the sun came up to lighten the day.
A Thread You Follow 