for Kyra
She faced, for an hour, a mountain lion.
She made noise. She spoke to it.
Eventually she sang to it.
Today, I return to the place where
my friend learned that just because
something can kill you doesn’t mean it will.
Eventually, the cancer did take her.
It’s true. But first she lived with it.
For years. First she played cello,
belly danced, snuggled with cats
and climbed with goats. First she sat
with me on the couch and giggled
and snuggled and read. First she knit
me a deep red shawl because I’m afraid of red.
First we sat by the river and made daisy chains
for each other’s long dark hair.
It sounds so improbable, but she met
the great cat and the cancer and her life
and her friends in the same great way—
with gentleness. She carried
a big stick not to swing but to pull
through the brush to make music.
She was a listener, a walker, a maker,
a lover of life. It sounds so improbable,
but she valued kindness above all else.
In the end, the mountain lion, after letting
my friend know full well she’d been seen,
it folded its ears and walked away.
In the end, the cancer traveled to her bones.
In the end, my friend will be known
for her gentleness, for how the tenderest touch,
the smallest note of love, the one most honest word
is the best way to make the whole world lean in.
Posts Tagged ‘kindness’
It Sounds So Improbable
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged friendship, gentleness, kindness, Kyra Kopestonksky on June 9, 2026| 11 Comments »
The Making
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged care, Kayleen Asbo, kindness, making, mandala, small acts on June 7, 2026| 3 Comments »
for Kayleen Asbo
In those days when I was terribly raw,
my friend would make mandalas
out of petals and sticks, pinecones and rocks,
sometimes shells, sometimes leaves.
She’d send a photo and a note
to say she was thinking of me.
I still marvel at how, of the thousands of choices
she made on any given day, she chose to spend time
sending love to me. How simple the act, really.
A smattering of acorns shaped into a circle
with some leaves arranged in the center.
Now I trust even the humblest, most ephemeral act,
when motivated by love, has the power
to reach through the years. Now I trust
I am made of thousands of acts of kindness,
most of them small. I can’t touch where they live
in my body, some I have even forgotten,
but to this day I am made of them all.
The Arrival
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged hospitality, kindness, language, travel on June 5, 2026| 2 Comments »
After I drove six hours
she welcomed me at the door
of her home
with a pair of slippers
and a glass of water—
there are many languages
I want to learn to speak fluently.
Kindness, most of all.
Maximum Strength
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged connection, duct tape, kindness, Moudi Sbeity, travel on April 26, 2026| 18 Comments »
for Moudi and Taylor
Starting the long drive home,
I do not turn on the radio
to hear news of the broken world.
My father taught me every broken thing,
from coolers to car doors to roofs,
could be fixed with silver duct tape,
at least for a while.
How big would the roll have to be,
America? On the seat beside me,
a green and white striped bag
is filled with hummus and cheesy crackers,
chocolates filled with coconut and pistachio,
oat protein bars, dried mango strips
plus a small baggie of pretzel twists,
a road-food care package my friends
prepared for me in the middle of the night
so it would be on the counter waiting for me
to find when I left their home at dawn.
Perhaps kindness is a kind of duct tape—
which is to say it doesn’t actually fix things,
but it does help us go on. What is broken
is still broken, but I can taste the adhesion
in the coffee they ground for me last night
so I could be awake for this morning’s drive—
hints of cinnamon, dark chocolate, toffee,
love. I feel how their kindness holds me together
this morning. How sticky it is, the message
they wrote for me in sand: you are loved.
The message will fade, but as the world
goes on breaking, I feel surrounded
by their kindness all the way home.
The Spreading
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged compassion, daisies, humanness, kindness, love, monks, wounds on February 10, 2026| 6 Comments »
There’s a place in my brain where hate won’t grow.
—Naomi Shihab Nye, “Jerusalem”
Sometimes a seed of compassion
slips into my brain and lands in a place
where before only anger could grow.
These seeds appear
when I stop seeing humans
as only our actions and start
seeing all of us as walking wounds.
They appear when I see others
finding ways to be generous, to be kind.
If I offer the seed the barest scrap
of attention, it begins to grow roots.
Then a stem. Then seed leaves.
More leaves. A bud. But what allows
for this growth is far beyond me—
rather some gift that comes through
when me and my story get out of the way.
This is how I sometimes come to find
a whole field of inner daisies thriving
in a place I once torched to the dirt.
At first, they needed my constant care.
Then they reseeded again. And again.
They spread into such unpredictable
places. Sometimes outside my inner world.
The same way the seeds arrived in me.
Through kindness. Through love.
It’s beautiful.
—Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer
Dear friends,
Today was day 120 of the monks walking from Texas to Washington DC to bring awareness to mindfulness and peace, compassion and connection. Today, after 2,300 miles, they arrived. What an amazing way to shine light on what is good inside all of us. How do we embody peace instead of arguing for it? What a question to live into.
Gesture
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged heart, kindness, kyra, love, rocks, simple, small gesture on February 7, 2026| 2 Comments »
Most days, I rearrange the small stones
on the front porch into a new semblance
of a heart. What moves them? The wind?
A mouse? I gently reshape them with my palms.
They have been here over four years now,
since the day you placed them beside the door,
the day my son did not come home.
Two dozen-ish penny-sized gray and white stones.
Rough to the fingertips, soft to the spirit.
You taught me how simply we might care
for each other with whatever is here.
Small rocks. Fallen petals. Tall stems
of dry grass. A touch of love.
Two willing hands.
When They Asked Me, “What Is Your Current Hyperfixation”
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged hyperfixation, kindness on January 30, 2026| 14 Comments »
I could have said potato chips. Always true. Plain ones. No flavors. Potato. Oil. Salt. I could have said black licorice from Finland, also always true. Or long flowy pants with no front pockets. That’s new. Tending my eight aloe babies still recovering from their transplant. Counting orchid buds about to bloom. How many grams of protein in a serving of anything. The insane softness of my daughter’s inner arm. How baby swifts can fly ten months without stopping. Imagining Rodin and Rilke watching sunsets together. But what I said felt truest of all—I am starved for all stories of kindness. The young man delivering diapers to immigrant families in Maine. The woman sending socks to my friend with cancer. The stranger who walked a labyrinth with me. My husband offering me the last egg in the carton. Anyone who smiles and says hello in the grocery store aisles. Anyone who says hello back.
The Channeling
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged divinity, fear, kindness, rising, uncertainty on January 20, 2026| 5 Comments »
We might as well be divine.
—Kate Horowitz, “i tell the ghost of carrie fisher the world is ending”
We might as well be divine.
As masked agents arrive
with guns, curses
and brutal disrespect,
we might as well be divine.
We might as well sing at the edge
of collapse, bring forth the kind
of harmony that calls goosebumps
to arms and hot tears to eyes.
As we march, as we gather,
as we fight for each other,
we might as well be divine.
As rivers shrink and sinkholes
appear and we face water
bankruptcy worldwide,
we might as well share
what is not ours to own.
And be kind to each other.
And praise what good we find.
This is it. It’s like this. Nothing
but now. What we bring,
who we are, this is all.
As tears fall fast and voices rise,
as fear grows thick and viscous,
we might as well be channels for grace,
we might as well be divine.
Through Her Discipline of Kindness
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged discipline, friendship, kindness, Kyra Kopestonksky, learning, legacy, teacher on January 13, 2026| 12 Comments »
for Kyra
She brought her cello to the desert,
playing long, slow notes to cactus,
canyons, the night, knowing
it matters to bring music
wherever you go. She taught me
to sing in the face of fear,
even when the mountain lion
held her with his amber eyes.
She taught me to plant
a weed in a pot and wait
with great patience to see
what kind of flower might bloom.
To bring something chocolaty and sweet
to share with others wherever you go.
She taught me to share scars,
even when they make others wince.
To use more garlic,
to read poems to strangers,
to dance barefoot in the grass.
I did not want to learn how quickly
a life can go from vibrant to silent
to gone. Did not want to learn
how great a hole one human can leave
in so many lives. But I am grateful
for all that she teaches me still—
the beauty in the ache, how to hear
the missing laughter in the silence,
how to read the letters that
don’t come anymore, how love
is so much bigger than a poem,
how she is no less herself now
than she was when she was here,
how even in her absence
she still teaches me discipline.
In a Difficult Time, I Remember
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Brahms, concert, kindness, Kyra Kopestonksky, music on December 23, 2025| 6 Comments »
for Kyra
In a corrugated metal culvert, tall enough
to walk in, Kyra made us a nest of warm blankets.
We entered the steel tube from the same side
the flash floods enter each fall, and we curled
into the softness she’d prepared. Meanwhile,
she settled on a stool and began to bow her cello,
a Brahms lullaby meant to lull and soothe.
Above us, cars hummed along on the highway.
Beside us, daylight glowed from both round ends.
Inside me, what was broken was still so deeply broken,
but I felt, too, the gentling that arrives with surprise
beauty. There are times someone tends to our hearts
with such warmth, such goodness, our hearts
cannot help but bloom. Even when the heart soil is barren.
Even when there’s no chance for rain. Even in the midst
of breaking—there, just at the edge of perception—
the heart becomes a wildflower in spring. It is simple kindness
that grows us, the kind my friend brought with her everywhere.
Even now, I can see her swaying as she played,
her body a radiant pendulum draped in red velvet.
Even now, I hear the long, sonorous notes of her song.
Even now, I think of her smile, humble and shy, and
how that moment still reverberates—her cello, our sighs,
the laughter that somehow finds its way to our lips
in the saddest of times. Years later, her kindness still echoes.