And let us not forget the magic in giving....

another beautiful piece by Mark Nepo.

THE GIVERS

Once the doctors broke their huddle, 

her uncle leaned in, “What would you like?” 

The little girl beamed, “A white piano!” 

It took him three weeks but he had 

one waiting in her room. She played 

it every day like the medicine it was.

And the guitar player stopping for water 

on his way through Virginia, hearing the 

gas station owner on the phone, “I got no 

choice. I gotta put ’em down.” The young 

man keeps telling everyone, “I don’t know 

why, but I had to take them.” Now the 

old dog and three pups live in his car.

And the old nurse who dreams of her 

grandma sitting in the backseat on long 

trips warming her hands. And this one,

in awe of her sister who after ten years of 

meditating gave it up to care for orphans. 

Not ’cause she was done with it, but ’cause 

what she found there was now everywhere.

And the speech therapist who when sad

opens the memory of her grandfather like 

a thin napkin holding a pressed flower. A 

country doctor, he took chickens instead of 

money. She was thirteen when he died. A 

week after the funeral, her father and uncle 

were going through his things. In a burst of

anger, her uncle dumped his books in the 

field by the burning barrel and dragged the 

bookcase home. It began to rain and the 

books, like broken doves, softened and 

enlarged. She took the older ones and 

keeps them close. She opens them

when it rains and he talks to her.

And how about the son of a heroin addict 

who serves soup in a shelter? Since the givers 

seldom know what they give, it’s the pour of 

the ladle that ties us all together. Now you tell 

me of your old aunt who lives on an island 

off the coast. Going blind, she’s tying ropes 

from house to tree to water bucket; 

feeling her way through all that 

is familiar and strangely liking it.

--Mark Nepo