A History of Kindness: A poem

Posted: Thursday Aug 29, 2024

Indigo - dive down through the layers, swim back up

Indigo

trying to be more loving

I send my daughter a text

which reads back as useless

electronic sputter

so I add a yellow cat emoji

which is not

summer-stripped gold leaves

spun floating in the frightening

aqua whorls of the Clutha

and I do not say

how my chest boils

the deep surges

of hidden canyon waterfalls

or how the banks

are thick with the strained silt

I’ve shed and shed and shed

I do not mention

that I wade, half drowned

through clots of spinning leaves

to the back flows of eddy lines

to say something

to say anything

like love

~ poem by Kirstie McKinnon, first published in The Otago Daily Times, Dunedin, New Zealand.