This world is just a little place

I’m after the memory of this letter...

This world is just a small place… just the red in the sky before the birds begin. So let us hold fast our small hands- that when the birds begin, none of us be missing.

These words have been a sort of home for me. I first read them etched in a public art installation in a Vermont airport. I read them on the edge of adulthood, my first leg of a journey into life in Africa. I read them when I was full of hope and full of confidence in myself — that this small body and soul would be capable of changing the world. I love the humility of these words - the truth of them, the way they make this world feel small and—somehow—easy to care for. There’s a trust in these words, a sense of gratitude that after the dark night, day will begin again, the birds will begin again. That every day we have the opportunity to hold onto each other. In the midst of this pandemic, the breaking down of our society, the shedding light on the bare reality of racism in our society, I’m needing these words.

There’s power in poetry, in writing, in connecting. There’s hope here.

So let us stay close to each other. Let us live into the space of plenty. Let us remember the ways we are alike and fight so that when the light comes again none of us be missing.