It’s kind of a big day, the winter solstice, kind of important
that two planets will converge
for the first time in 800 years.
*
800 years ago there were all kinds of meanings for “kind”
that now are said to be obsolete,
though they’re kind of not, if you think about it.
“Kind” could stand in for genitalia back then,
which kind of makes sense, since it also meant both “generation”
and inherited features that marked one
as member of a clan or tribe or family. Kin.
*
“Kin” still means related by blood,
though it’s said more in the South
than in the North. It’s been enlarged
to allow for connections beyond DNA,
when family’s not enough.
*
Anne Sexton’s refrain, “I have been her kind,”
is a vow of empathy and solidarity
among women, even the most abject
in our world’s long history. I return this gift in kind
when I tell her, Anne, I have been your kind,
and pretzel my legs the way she did
and leave behind wreckage I try to repair
with a compulsive convergence of words.
*
We aren’t kind to one another anymore. Some
reserve their kindness for the ones
whose skin is kin. The pundits lament
our tribalism to explain sedition.
*
Saturn and Jupiter converged when the Magi
sought the newborn Christ, which is why
it’s being called the Christmas star.
What kind of consolation can we find in that
amid plague and graft, we who were taught
that this is a different kind of civilization
than the brutal empires of the past?
Is it still possible for us to unite
in the name of a warm and fuzzy babykind?
*
Always be kind, the saying goes, because
you never know what someone else is going
through. It’s become a kind of cliché,
but that doesn’t mean it isn’t true.
In a world of heartless rulers, kind people
go unrecorded, undiscovered planets
that sometimes converge to change things
big and small. It’s kind of a big day,
every day, to seek that kind of convergence.
