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.


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

About 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.

***
The Academy of American Poets is a nonprofit, mission-driven organization, whose aim is to make poetry available to a wider audience. Email The Academy at poem-a-day[at]poets.org.


(c) 2015 Jan Beatty. Originally published by the Academy of American Poets, www.poets.org. Distributed by King Features Syndicate