Shroud Memento

24/09/2026

Kindness

Naomie Shihab Nye, Palestinian/American (1952 - )

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.

What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to gaze at bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.

10/09/2026

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30/06/2026

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04/05/2026

Surviving Has Made Me Crazy

by Mark Nepo, USA (1951 - )

I eat flowers now and birds follow me.
I open myself like an inlet
and dolphin energies
swim on through.

Wherever I go, I remain silent
and the silence begins to glow
till one eye in the light
outsees two in the dark.

When asked, I now hesitate
for there are so many ways
to love the earth.

I water things now constantly:
water the hearts of dead friends with light,
the sores of the living with anything warm,
water the skies with a thousand affections
and follow the voices of animals
into grasses that move like ocean.

I eat flowers now and birds come.
I eat care and things to love arrive.
I eat time and as I age
whatever I swallow grows timeless.

I eat and un-die
and water my doubts
with silence
and birds come.

Image of The Young Bather by Gustave Courbet.

17/04/2026

This morning I looked out onto the garden and saw three stunning bromeliad flowers which has prompted this post.

In October 2014, one of my brothers ended his life. As a talented and creative soul, he had a love for bromeliads and other sculptural plants. Years before, he had given a bromeliad to the mother of his partner. The plant stayed in her garden for years without ever flowering. The day after we were notified of his death, the bromeliad he had gifted his partner's mother flowered for the first time. Her instant reaction to this was, 'There's Matthew, showing himself to us in another form.'

Humans are good at creating narratives around wonders of the world and other events. Innately we attach a meaning to phenomena in an attempt to understand something bigger than us, something beyond our mortal boundaries.

When I heard that the bromeliad had flowered after Matthew's death, I too believed that it was Matthew showing himself to us. I also had a similar experience with a friend's father who grew Dahlias. I had associated the flower with Pat, a keen gardener. A few years before his death I had planted Dahlia tubers that had never flowered. When he died, they flowered. Is it Pat showing himself to me or just chance?

Immediately after my father took his last breath in October 2008, I looked out the window of the room he was in and saw a very large monitor lizard that I had not seen in the ground of the hospital before until that moment. It looked up at me at the same time I looked out the window and then walked off slowly. My father's spirit, or a monitor who happened to be there at that time?

As a person who notices what's happening around me more so than the average person, I recognise my response to events rather than impose a meaning.

Does it matter what we believe about events that we cannot prove or explain?

What we hold in our heart and mind is a person's business. I only hope what is held is not harmful to a person.

Today in my garden, I looked out at 3 magnificent bromeliad centurions, and of course I thought of Matthew, and that's a good thing. Nature lives on in various forms; that's science. Our loved ones live on in various forms; that's nature.

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