There is a bowl.
Stories gather within its unsounded depths
even as the bowl sits in the curve of your palm
tales once pebble-sized now grown into stones,
sly ones that enter without your knowing.
There is a bowl
filled with the water of compassion.
This is the same bowl.
It brims over crying
when the stories jostle against one another.
In its brimming the bowl asks only this –
Make room.
Make space between the words where
consequence and compassion may sit in communion.
Everything rests on the holding of the bowl.
photo credit: Nancy G. Shapiro
Originally published at www.nancygshapiro.com (October, 2015)
Originally published in The Book of Calm: Clarity, Compassion, and Choice in a Turbulent World (October 24, 2017)