We are confronted constantly by a rhetoric that tells us how divided we all are, and of course there is truth in this. But it isn’t the whole story. We also meet each other so often as humans first, offering a hand or a smile or the example of a tender engagement with the day. This poem by Dorianne Laux doesn’t deny all that is difficult, but allows for how in our passing connections we tether each other to the world.
“All day it continues, each kindness
reaching toward another—a stranger
singing to no one as I pass on the path”
