November 27, 2017

comparison giving

There are bike paths in rural Pennsylvania that desperately need resurfacing. Equally,
a gallery in Newark, perennially underfunded, is on the verge of losing its tenancy.
Across the country, the annual pleas arrive from the usual suspects, complete with
intimate portraits of those whose lives were saved by donations like yours.
Everywhere, the sidewalks in front of grocery stores populate with costumed men
holding red cans and ringing a single, insistent bell. No matter how many times
I reach into my pocket, it feels like what's inside will never be enough. But I forget
the daily plentitudes whose wells resist emptying - kindness, not the least of these.
There is a clutch of old wounds - mine and someone else's - that would welcome release,
and who knows the richness that might roll in then, filling the cracks.