Who knew what went through his head,
the man who said,
"I'll pay for the people behind me, too--how much?"
About twelve bucks. Not high
philanthropy, but kindness in a
world that seems not to remember
kindness.
Some spark jumped from his car to hers, and
hearing that her family's
hamburgers, fries and shakes had been paid for,
she said, "I'll pay for the people behind me."
Nine hundred gifts,
two and a half days, over and
over, in the bleak almost-winter
of Brainerd, Minnesota.
We've been cheated, lied to,
humiliated on the world stage.
We've been profiled, beat up, spit on
and killed.
We've collapsed and died--
more of us than our fathers and uncles who died in
World War II.
We've grown to dislike and distrust each other.
But some guy at a DQ
changed the world,
turned that ice cream parlor into a shrine.
Brought out plain old vanilla
decency.
Janet Carl's poetry has appeared in Lyrical Iowa, her children's fiction in Plays and Young and Alive, her nonfiction in Nonprofit World and the Des Moines Register.
the man who said,
"I'll pay for the people behind me, too--how much?"
About twelve bucks. Not high
philanthropy, but kindness in a
world that seems not to remember
kindness.
Some spark jumped from his car to hers, and
hearing that her family's
hamburgers, fries and shakes had been paid for,
she said, "I'll pay for the people behind me."
Nine hundred gifts,
two and a half days, over and
over, in the bleak almost-winter
of Brainerd, Minnesota.
We've been cheated, lied to,
humiliated on the world stage.
We've been profiled, beat up, spit on
and killed.
We've collapsed and died--
more of us than our fathers and uncles who died in
World War II.
We've grown to dislike and distrust each other.
But some guy at a DQ
changed the world,
turned that ice cream parlor into a shrine.
Brought out plain old vanilla
decency.
Janet Carl's poetry has appeared in Lyrical Iowa, her children's fiction in Plays and Young and Alive, her nonfiction in Nonprofit World and the Des Moines Register.
I enjoyed reading this poem and it’s greater message. I experienced this same thing at a Tim Horton’s in Canada, Summer 2019, when the man in front of me at the drive-thru paid for my coffee and breakfast sandwich, and I, in turn, paid for the car behind me. I haven’t thought much about that rare, kind experience until I read your poem just now. Maybe the chain of kindness lasted 2 1/2 days at that Tim Horton’s, too? Thanks for this poem.
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