About Standing (in Kinship)

We all have the same little bones in our foot

twenty-six with funny names like navicular.

Together they build something strong—

our foot arch a pyramid holding us up.

The bones don’t get casts when they break.

We tape them—one phalange to its neighbor for support.

(Other things like sorrow work that way, too—

find healing in the leaning, the closeness.)

Our feet have one quarter of all the bones in our body.

Maybe we should give more honor to feet

and to all those tiny but blessed cogs in the world—

communities, the forgotten architecture of friendship.