Saturday's Poem: Living By Kindness

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Living By Kindness by Kim Stafford

Strange things happen in the mind —like the time I stopped under a street light to write on an envelope a chance thought furrowing my head —"we haven't all killed each other yet"— and then went on through the dark streets of my Idaho city trudging coal dust and snow. Next day at the lumber yard, I caught a clerk glancing at me sideways. Then I remembered the envelope in my heart — pocket, its message bold as a badge: "we haven't all killed each other yet."He was good to me. Sliding a pine plank off the rack so clean and sweet, so long, he said, "You paid for an eight, but all we got today is twelves." Words have made nothing happen yet except a free four feet of pine and the cradle it made and the child I held under a light in the snow.