The Mundane Way

I am thinking of the mulberries we picked today,           nearly black knobby fruits,           their juice spilling so easily from thin skins. I held a branch down while you picked them double-fisted,           dropping them into the empty bottle where they crashed,           spurting tiny jets of juice. The girls ate them by the handful,           stuffing the dark sweet berries into their small mouths,           purple smears like bruises blooming on their hands, legs, cheeks. We had hoped for ice cream but were foiled,           and returning from that failed trip           we found the trees, dangling their fruit in offering. We ate, and it was good. It was very good.

About a year ago I was on my way into a church to attend a meeting. As I approached the door I passed a woman sitting on a red, overturned milk crate near the door. She had dark hair, and she was leaning forward, her bottom coming off the crate, her hands reaching just off the edge of the sidewalk and toward the asphalt of the parking lot. She appeared to be slowly falling forward, tumbling off the crate in slow motion. I had stopped to hold the door for a man who was entering the church just behind me, and as I watched, he approached the woman on the crate. "Here's two of them," he said, handing down a carton of Marlboro Light 100s. "Have a good day." I realized then what the man with the Marlboros must have recognized immediately: the woman had no doubt been reaching for a discarded cigarette butt that someone had tossed down on their way into the church. I felt awed by the man's simple act of compassion. Without the slightest trace of judgement or distast...