Empty Empathy: A Thanksgiving Poem
I, we,
Need you, us,
Understanding, caring, believing, standing,
I in you, you in me,
Seems a far reach.
Once,
(No, I don’t remember when, or where,
But I have the sentiment which has a power of reminding without details,
but with robust impressions I can feel, smell, hear, see, taste,)
We had silos filled.,
The crushed grain that bruised by the mill put substance into the hope we consumed was plentiful.
We, too, had been crushed, marginalized, so we ate from the bread
and drank from the vine of the care of others and an Other
that gave us sustenance
and we gave thanks,
we thought.
But gratitude, the real thing, not the imitation kind that is offered with hopes
that not much will need to be said but that you’ll know what I mean
(you do, don’t you?) without making a scene
and certainly without too much effort
But gratitude to germinate, must be planted at the right depth,
in a good furrow.
Not all of the seeds take. Better plant many.
Plant especially the ones that came from misery, pain, and hardship
met by mercy, healing and help
These will grow the strongest most resilient crop.
But we have not planted well or enough and it seems a drought is threatening.
So, with dwindled stock and drained silos, we may ask, is there enough.
Yet a secret storehouse with its magic door may have not only enough, but abundance,
If we can remember how to access it.
The door opens, though we must pull hard at it, rub our eyes and
see the mature fruit of our own pain and trial,
except it is not ours,
letting our eyes adjust, we see this time it is theirs,
Can we step into it, though? It’s theirs, it’s theirs.
Ah, there is the thorny part, for the view is but blurry
for only a fuzzy view is available through the lenses of “mine” and “theirs”
all is each other’s and somehow the lens broke into two
align the seams and hold them together, tight, yet tighter
there is only an “ours”
Ah, but that gratitude we expressed, and perhaps forgot from long ago,
that sentiment stored as an off-chance antidote
unlikely (it seemed) to have been worth keeping
(Where do we keep it?)
Found in the back of the storehouse, the lid removed, it is pungent,
A sign that it hasn’t lost it’s potency.
No instructions on how to administer it, just a list of stories, aphorisms, covenants,
written on paper, yellowed by time, and brittle to the touch
Recitations of impulsive promises made out of the ecstasy of thanksgiving
For mercy received, healing provided, sustenance given, grace all.
So others shall receive from me.
Reverberations of sayings by rote hidden so far in the heart (or misplaced somewhere else)
The words resemble something, but some tonic must be offered
To reconstitute your meaning
Many of the words have missing words or phrases, but a few can be made out
‘It is because of what the LORD did for me when I came out of Egypt.’
‘Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,’
‘If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.’
‘do not oppress the alien, the orphan, and the widow,’
‘You shall also love the stranger, for you were strangers’
‘do not wrong the orphan, nor chide away the beggar’
‘I SEEK the enlargement of my heart that there may be room for Peace’
Statements, poems, rooted in my own experience or someone’s anyway that I took as mine
The scars of my wounds will heal and harden, but they will remain
To connect me with others who will hurt in their season
To compel me to let the ferment of my gratitude
(I do hope I remembered to ferment gratitude)
Be the elixir of someone else’s pain
The potion that allows me to enter their suffering
I am not powerless, we are not. Gratitude grows quickly when planted wildly,
even new crops.
Plant lots, for not all will take root.
The stories, the promises, will not be fulfilled without this.
The silos can be full, though without gratefulness they appear empty.
The silos are full, if we’re willing to use the grain that’s inside,
Empathy.