Yesterday, after a morning walk up to Lily Lake with old friends and young dogs, I did the afternoon sort-of-country show on KHNS. ( Think Willie Nelson meets James Taylor) and I played “Stand Right By Each Other,” a song from a gift from Chip,Lucinda Williams’ new recording, “Down Where the Spirit Meets the Bone.” It was the tune that best suited the way the show was unfolding– the rhythm and swing and mood and balance of a radio show is as much a thing unto itself as an essay or a story or a poem is more than the words and images in it. Anyway, I read some lyrics from the title track, “Compassion,” because they seemed to fit. Later, a friend stopped me in the grocery store and thanked me. As the old year ends and a new one begins and we are all still fumbling around in the darkness thinking about doing better at lots of things in 2015, they are a wise nudge in that direction. Compassion is actually a poem, written by Lucinda Williams’ father, the Arkansas poet Miller Williams:
Compassion
Have compassion for everyone you meet
even if they don’t want it. What seems conceit,
bad manners, or cynicism is always a sign
of things no ears have heard, no eyes have seen.
You do not know what wars are going
down there where the spirit meets the bone.
