Small Comfort, A Poem by Katha Pollitt

The lady above is someone I met at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden several years ago. I don't know who she is, but she was one of many pilgrims who had come to marvel at roses in rain, and for a few minutes we all had that in common.

I was delighted beyond all reason to see how many people were taking time out from busy urban lives that day just to walk around looking at flowers, inhaling their fragrance, noting their names. This lovely woman with the perfectly imperfect smile had a story to tell, but for now, she was just happy to be exactly where she was.

After visiting the garden, I took refuge in a corner cafe and sat over a cup of coffee, perusing a damp newspaper, perfectly content.

The following poem brings me back to the feeling I had then, and to a kind of prayer I still carry in my heart.

SMALL COMFORT by Katha Pollitt

Coffee and cigarettes in a clean cafe,
forsythia lit like a damp match against
a thundery sky drunk on its own ozone,
the laundry cool and crisp and folded away
again in the lavender closet-too late to find
comfort enough in such small daily moments
of beauty, renewal, calm, too late to imagine
people would rather be happy than suffering
and inflicting suffering. We’re near the end,
but O before the end, as the sparrows wing
each night to their secret nests in the elm’s green dome
O let the last bus bring
love to lover, let the starveling
dog turn the corner and lope suddenly
miraculously, down its own street, home.

"Small Comfort" by Katha Pollitt, from The Mind-Body Problem