A Poem: Unbending

Kindness is unbending,
so unfailingly insistent
in how she shakes me awake,
asks me what’s my plan?
And it’s not hard to realise
kindness is the helper God sends,
so quietly determined,
prepared to sit and strategise.
How she says,
‘now against me no-one really
stands a chance.’
And I see how she’s right,
how more than once she’s undone me
to the point of tears.

‘So here’, she says,
‘this is what we’ll do.’
And she stands me up to walk
in step with her.
Shows me
how to change direction,
how to wait that miniscule second
to follow her.
Reminding me
that stepping out without her
is foolhardy pride at best.

‘You want things easier’ she says,
‘then put me on – learn to disarm.’
How she recalls
that everyone expects a fighter
when provoked,
while what kindness does is render
the fight unnecessary.
That person against the world,
misunderstood, resentful,
she reminds me how
kindness is the sideways entrance in.

How continuing to listen and forgive,
to greet each other
as though we’d each just received
pardons from heaven.
To live like a mirror that reflects the best,
is the way that person in the dark
sees evidence of light.
How without judgement or blame,
or fear even,
but the unbending confidence of kindness,
even locked doors become an access point.

‘You become’ she says,
‘like sun filtering through curtains,
or air breathed in.’
Yes, how I see now,
kindness will not bend, until it does.
Will not flood until unplugged.
How kindness is a needle with a thread.
How the mending
always starts with the tiniest tears.
But then the threads restore,
with what was broken wrought
back into cloth.

And that person
with their backpack of grenades?
They then just see
how they’re fighting themselves.
Kindness becoming the air
that is punched,
the soft landing that absorbs,
the light that heals.

Ana Lisa de Jong
Living Tree Poetry
March 2022