About Standing (in Kinship)
What communities hold you up? Which ones do you sustain? Native American poet Kimberly Blaeser explores this idea in one of her most recent poems—short, simple, and with a powerful message. One of our favorite things about this poem is that much of its important “work” happens in the parenthetical. Sometimes this is true of our work, too—the unwitnessed moments of connection, the uncelebrated phone call, the extra moment of observation that makes us run late, but leads to a diagnosis.
About Standing (in Kinship)
by Kimberly Blaeser
We all have the same little bones in our foot
twenty-six with funny names like navicular.
Together they build something strong--
our foot arch a pyramid holding us up.
The bones don't get casts when they break.
We tape them-- one phalange to its neighbor for support.
(Other things like sorrow work that way, too--
find healing in the leaning, the closeness.)
Our feet have one quarter of all the bones in our body.
Maybe we should give more honor to feet
and to all those tiny but blessed cogs in the world--
communities, the forgotten architecture of friendship.
