In Defense of Gentleness

Poem of the Month

In Defense of Gentleness

Those who move

among us in their

failings, those who

broke at their first suffering, those

who cannot swim,

who will not take their share, who

balk at the confounding

wisdom of violence, of the

sheer blood-lust force required

to muscle into this world, to

merely live upright, are those

who we come to in the end,

begging for gentleness, for

proof of mercy.

All along they have guarded

the power of our fragility, a weapon

we were never trained to wield. All along they have

known, and have suffered for it.

They hold up

love like the world itself, thin

arms straining to contain its lightness.

They are in the end the most

resilient, like the soft

bones of a willow, triumphant

when deferring to the storm—

shaking loose their sorrow.

Allowing, allowing, allowing.

—Kristen McHenry