Thanksgiving Week Poetry by Miller Williams

A good poem for Thanksgiving week
http://irretrievablybroken.wordpress.com/2011/11/22/a-good-poem-for-thanksgiving-week/
November 22, 2011
.…during which many of us gird our loins to cope with difficult friends, difficult family members, difficult ex-family members, difficult not-one’s-own-family members, and the difficult exes of family members and friends. This has the great virtue of being short enough to memorize; you can chant it like a mantra while hiding in the kitchen doing the supper dishes, if necessary.

Compassion

Have compassion for everyone you meet,
even if they don’t want it. What seems conceit,
bad manners, or cynicism is always a sign
of things no ears have heard, no eyes have seen.
You do not know what wars are going on
down there where the spirit meets the bone.

–Miller Williams

(I’d never heard of Miller Williams. For more about him, click here.)

(Breaking news, courtesy of commenter Jen: He’s Lucinda Williams’s father! I’ll be damned. I am an utter ignoramus.)

lwj