Today, the 13th of November, is World Kindness Day, so here is a poem to celebrate!
World Kindness Day is Today!
Tag: kindness
#EmpathyPoem – Feeding the World
Another #EmpathyDay poem – again from Be the Change, Poems to Help You Save the World, written with Matt Goodfellow and Roger Stevens, Macmillan.
9-year old Katie Stagliano brought home a tiny cabbage seedling as part of a school project, and tended it so well it became an enormous 40lb cabbage! She donated it to a soup kitchen where it fed 275 people. Katie decided to start vegetable gardens so that she could donate the produce to help people in need. Katie’s Krops now has 100 gardens across the US, helping feed people in need.
Feeding the World
One cabbage seedling,
with small stems bowed
and pale leaves furled,
given food and water
and love can grow
a heart to feed the world.
© Liz Brownlee
Image from Bayer CropScience UK by creative commons license and changed by removing the background.
#EmpathyDay – Refugee Poem
This poem is in The Same Inside, Poems about Empathy and Friendship by me, Matt Goodfellow and Roger Stevens, Macmillan
Refugee
After the bombing
and all are lost
and gone
I walk
I can carry only
my father’s pride
my mother’s longing
my brother’s blood
my sister’s hope
and my dreams
but my father’s pride
cannot be carried
as a refugee
so I lay it down
and walk
when I sleep
my mother’s longing
is too painful to hold
so I lay it down
and walk
until my shoes
fall off my feet
and I leave
my brother’s blood
and my own
on the road
as if it is worthless
and I walk
so far and
sleep so little
I cannot remember
my dreams
so I lay them down
I can carry only
my sister’s hope
which is light
in my heart
© Liz Brownlee
Kindness Poem for #EmpathyDay 2020
Another poem for EmpathyDay! I have permission to post another poem from our forthcoming collection of mental health poems for primary school age – Being Me, Poems about Thoughts, Worries and Feelings, Otter-Barry Books, by me, Matt Goodfellow and Laura Mucha.
#Empathy Day: Anne Sullivan – Teacher to Helen Keller
It’s empathy day! Here’s another poem about empathy. This is from Reach the Stars, Poems about Extraordinary Women and Girls, by me, Jan Dean and Michaela Morgan, Macmillan.
Helen Keller lost both her sight and hearing as a baby. She became very frustrated as a child, living in silence and darkness until her family employed Anne Sullivan. Despite being partially blind herself, she cleverly found ways to help Helen communicate. Anne was Helen’s teacher, support and companion for the next 49 years until she died – by then, she had enabled Helen get to college, learn to type, speak, get married, tackle social and political issues, including women’s suffrage, and write a book.
Anne Sullivan, Teacher to Helen Keller
I started with the word for ‘doll’,
finger-spelling on her hand.
This child could neither hear, nor see –
how could I help her understand?
To fill the space for song and bird,
all that sound and light explain;
out of reach did not exist
and dark and silence had no name.
Until I spelled into her hand
under a pump – though deaf and blind,
the word for water and the water
flowed together in her mind.
That living word grew in her hands,
gave her ways to hear and see,
let in hope and joy and love
with words that set her free.
© Liz Brownlee
Arguing – Poem for #EmpathyDay 2020
Today it’s empathy day! I have permission to post this poem from a forthcoming collection of mental health poems for primary school age – Being Me, Poems about Thoughts, Worries and Feelings, Otter-Barry Books, by me, Matt Goodfellow and Laura Mucha. This is just a placeholder image – we have a fabulous illustrator on board!
Gorilla for #EmpathyDay!
Today is #EmpathyDay2020! And so all day there will be posts about Empathy and love. This is an old post from my personal website, Lizbrownlee.com . (Poetry Roundabout is for ALL poets and poetry!).
The image above was not taken in the wild, it is taken at Bergen Zoo by Sabine Bresser, of N’Gayla, a gorilla who unexpectedly gave birth to twins, one boy, one girl, a very rare event for gorillas.
I chose it because of her incredibly proud and loving smile. She is, reportedly, a happy character.
Gorillas are among my favourite creatures.
To see how gentle they are, watch this short film of a chance encounter two men had with a wild gorilla family in Uganda.
It says it all, really, doesn’t it?
They are immensely strong but rarely use that strength to do harm.
They live in balance with nature, mainly on flowers and leaves.
They are very endangered.
Here are two quotes by Dian Fossey, from “Gorillas in the Mist”, published in 2000 by Mariner Books.
“The more you learn about the dignity of the gorilla, the more you want to avoid people”.
“When you realise the value of all life, you dwell less on what is past and concentrate more on the preservation of the future”.
All life is bound together in one huge link of dependency.
Our food, our water, our shelter, and our lives in every country are bound up in cycles, and one link that leaves a chain can have catastrophic effects on the creatures and plants above and below it.
We should be looking to every loss, every creature or plant in trouble, to see how to help them.
We are stripping the planet. We are destroying the very air that sustains us, and the water we drink.
We do not have the knowledge of contact with the earth any more that gives us the careful path to tread in between taking enough and leaving enough, for others, and for the continuance of our species.
Things that the gorilla knows.
We need to take a step back out of our lives and think about what is really important before it is too late.
Where is it all going to end?
.
Gorilla (for Julia Green)
.
A gorilla has massive muscles,
and is ominously dark,
can uproot banana trees
and strip the bark,
but his character is subtle,
sensitive and calm,
his power used for warning,
and rarely to harm,
for his colour has been made
from the shadows in the breeze,
his nature from the sunshine
and his food of flowers and leaves.
.
© Liz Brownlee
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If you value gorillas, you may want to help here: WWF.
.Photo © Sabine Bresser
Information from WWF.
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