Poetry

Spring 2008

 

 

Marie Ponsot

The Milk of Human Kindness

For Nancy and Joyce James

You phone, you offer, you drive out of your way
to my address. You give me a lift.
My spirits lift to be your guest. The day
is promising, graceful — like you, a gift,
good luck. If it holds, I — what luck — might find
someone who can use something I can give.
We're almost strangers but are of one mind
that praises the local good, the relative.
It relates us. I take it in. You pass it on.
Your words shape your city to hold a garden;
a writ or wit of choice runs here. In Houston,
Beijing, Rhodes: human nature. The decency
of human language makes human geography.

 

 

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