Each comfort we manage... (Mark Nepo)

  I think each comfort we manage -- 

each holding in the night, each opening 

of a wound, each closing of a wound, each 

pulling of a splinter or razored word, each 

fever sponged, each dear thing given 

to someone in greater need -- each 

passes on the kindness we've known. 

                       

For the human sea is made of waves 

that mount and merge till the way a 

nurse rocks a child is the way that child 

all grown rocks the wounded, and how 

the wounded, allowed to go on, rock 

strangers who in their pain 

don't seem so strange. 

                       

Eventually, the rhythm of kindness 

is how we pray and suffer by turns, 

and if someone were to watch us 

from inside the lake of time, 

they wouldn't be able to tell if we are 

dying or being born. 

--Mark Nepo, The Rhythm of Each

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