The printer who sets this page with skill, though he may not admire it.
Anyone whose skeleton is susceptible to music.
She who, having loved a book or record, instantly passes it on.
Whose heart lilts at a span of vacant highway, the fervent surge of acceleration, psalm of the tires.
Adults content to let children bury them in sand or leaves.
Those for whom sustaining hatred is a difficulty.
Surprised by tenderness on meeting, at a reunion, the persecutors of their youth.
Likely to forget debts owed them but never a debt they owe.
Apt to read Plutarch or Thich Nhat Hanh with the urgency of one reading the morning news.
Frightened ones who fight to keep fear from keeping them from life.
The barber who, no matter how long the line, will not rush the masterful shave or cut.
The small-scale makers of precious obscurios—pomegranate spoons, conductors’ batons, harpsichord tuning hammers, War of 1812 re-enactors’ ramrods, hand-cranks for hurdy-gurdies.
The gradeschool that renewed the brownfields back of the A&P and made them ample miraculous May and June.
The streetgang that casts no comment as they thin out to let Bob the barking man squawk past them on the sidewalk.
The two African medical students in Belgrade, 1983, who seeing a traveller lost and broke took him in and fed him rice and beans cooked over a camp stove in their cubicle of a room and let him sleep there while one of them studied all night at the desk between the beds with the lamp swung low.
Those who sit on front porches, not in fenced privacy, in the erotic inaugural summer night steam.
Who redeem from neglect a gorgeous, long-orphaned word.
Who treat dogs with a sincere and comical diplomacy.
Attempt to craft a decent wine in a desperate climate.
Clip the chain of consequence by letting others have the last word.
Master the banjo.
Are operatically loud in love.
These people, without knowing it, are saving the world.
6 comment(s)
This is one of the best poems I have read in a while. I always love a good ending, whether it is in a James Michener novel or a poem.
This poem should be read aloud to anyone whose day you wish to gladden. My daughter read it a friend while they were sitting in a cafe in Paris, and then shared it with me in Ottawa on skype later that day. It brought tears and smiles both times.
And my friend, whose daughter read it aloud in Paris, passed it on to me, and I will pass it on to my grade 12 students so they too can appreciate the amazing people in our world.
My daughter read it a friend while they were sitting in a cafe in Paris, and then shared it with me in Ottawa on skype later that day.
