The Kindness by Jan Beatty

View this email on a browser Forward to a friend January 28, 2015   The Kindness   Jan Beatty

Banff, Alberta   The mother elk and 2 babies are sniffing the metal handle of the bear-proof trash bin. I remember the instructions for city people: 3 football fields of space between you & the elk if their babies are with them. I’m backing up slowly, watching the calves run into each other as they bend to eat grass/look up at the mother at the same time. The caramel color of their coat, the sloping line of their small snouts & I want to hold that beauty, steal it for me, but I’m only on football field # 2 & walking into the woods past the lodge pole pines. Their fragility, their awkward bumping opens me to a long ago time—               a hand on the door,               I was walking in to the psych hospital in Pittsburgh, feeling broken and stripped down—               a hand on the door               from around my body & I looked up to see the body of a man, who said: Let me get that for you—               a hand on the door               & the bottom of me               dropped/ I couldn’t breathe for the kindness. I couldn’t say how deep that went for me. I had been backing up, awkward/ I had been blind to my own beauty.            Copyright © 2015 by Jan Beatty Used with permission of the author. About This Poem   “In ‘The Kindness’ I speak about the breathlessness of the single gesture. The woman in the poem is transported between worlds inside of one moment—and then saved by the unassuming movement of the baby elk/the human hand.” —Jan Beatty   Jan Beatty is the author of The Switching/Yard (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2013). She directs the creative writing program at Carlow University and lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Most Recent Book by Beatty   The Switching/Yard (University of Pittsburg Press, 2013) "The Snow Leopard Mother" by Jennifer K. Sweeney "At Bay" by Carl Phillips "Suffering the Unattainable" by David Dodd Lee Poem-a-Day   Launched during National Poetry Month in 2006, Poem-a-Day features new and previously unpublished poems by contemporary poets on weekdays and classic poems on weekends. Thanks for being a part of the Academy of American Poets community. To learn about other programs, including National Poetry Month, Poem in Your Pocket Day, the annual Poets Forum, and more, visit Poets.org.   You are receiving this e-mail because you elected to subscribe to our mailing list. If you would like to unsubscribe, please click here.   © Academy of American Poets 75 Maiden Lane, Suite 901, New York, NY 10038