Poetry Speaks: "Good Bones" by Maggie Smith

On lament, hope, and beauty

Photo by Nolan Issac on Unsplash

Recently, I realized I'm getting more sensitive as I get older. Violent movies or gory scenes in books leave me more unsettled than they used to. Loud noises or clutter overwhelm me more quickly. There are times when scrolling Instagram or TikTok can be mind-numbing fun, but lately, I've found scrolling to be draining and that it often leads to anxiety about the state of the world.

There is so much pain all around us at any given moment. Our dearest friend might be struggling with something invisible that we'll never know about. The stranger who passes us while we're driving to work might be reeling from unfathomable grief. The wars currently raging are destroying families whose names we'll never hear. The world feels very heavy these days, these shorter days when the sun disappears sooner than most of us wish, leaving us in darkness.

I help lead a student and staff multicultural book club on Wednesday afternoons. For the fall session, we're reading This Here Flesh: Spirituality, Liberation, and the Stories That Make Us by the brilliant Cole Arthur Riley, who also authors the Instagram account Black Liturgies. Cole is wise beyond her years, writing with the truth-telling of James Baldwin and the poetic skill of Maya Angelou. This week's assigned reading was on chapters about fear, belonging, and lament, which seemed especially timely. We talked about the first two things but didn't get to lament. Lament is a loaded word that brings to mind overwhelming sorrow, but Cole writes:

Lament is not anti-hope. It's not even a stepping-stone to hope. Lament itself is a form of hope. It's an innate awareness that what is should not be. As if something is written on our hearts that tells us exactly what we are meant for, and whenever confronted with something contrary to this, we experience a crumbling. And in the rubble, we say, God, you promised. We ask, Why? And how could we experience such a devastation if we were not on some mysterious plane, hoping for something different. Our hope can be only as deep as our lament is. And our lament as deep as our hope.

A few years ago, when, once again, the world felt heavy, and lament was in the air, Maggie Smith's poem "Good Bones" went viral. That's the poem I thought of this week as I reflected on hope and lament.

“Good Bones”

Life is short, though I keep this from my children.
Life is short, and I’ve shortened mine
in a thousand delicious, ill-advised ways,
a thousand deliciously ill-advised ways
I’ll keep from my children. The world is at least
fifty percent terrible, and that’s a conservative
estimate, though I keep this from my children.
For every bird there is a stone thrown at a bird.
For every loved child, a child broken, bagged,
sunk in a lake. Life is short and the world
is at least half terrible, and for every kind
stranger, there is one who would break you,
though I keep this from my children. I am trying
to sell them the world. Any decent realtor,
walking you through a real shithole, chirps on
about good bones: This place could be beautiful,
right? You could make this place beautiful.

I love this pairing of Cole Arthur Riley and Maggie Smith. First, we're invited into lament, knowing lament itself is a form of hope. And then we're called to see the mess around us and make something beautiful out of it. This calling is a holy one, and it overwhelms with its bigness. How can I find beauty in lament when it feels soul-crushing? How can I bring beauty to a world where children's lives are taken before they're comfortable sleeping without a nightlight?

I can't erase someone else's grief, stop the next front-page shooting, or bring peace amid war. I only have my people and my spaces, and it's my sacred responsibility to create as much beauty as possible in the areas where I exist and where my voice reaches. All we have is where we are. I can choose to be a person who values kindness, dignity, and justice. I can work toward peace in my relationships and root for the success of the people I know who are doing hope-filled, life-giving work. I won't do anything if I think about the problem of evil because it’s too much. But I can bring empathy to my workplaces, compassion to my community, faithfulness to my church, and generosity to my home.

One night earlier this week, I placed a mobile order to pick up dinner on my way home from work. I got to the restaurant when my order should have been ready, but I had to wait for 30 minutes because there was only one employee. I was annoyed because I just wanted to get home, but as I sat at a table waiting, I knew I had two choices. I could react harshly and make it known by my words and attitude that I was frustrated at having to wait, or I could show grace to this harried woman doing her best to fulfill orders by herself. I chose grace, and another customer who was waiting did, too. The employee's relief was obvious.

Being patient in the face of a minor inconvenience is such a small thing, but I believe it brought a moment of beauty to a woman who thought someone might yell at her. Sitting around a table with my colleagues and a few teenagers discussing fear and belonging builds relationships and cultivates beauty in the face of shallow bonds and dehumanization. Allowing myself to lament the state of things creates beauty because it acknowledges that life is meant to be more than pain. Hope is in the lament and the poems that remind us there's beauty in the bones.

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Where have you seen beauty lately? How are you handling the world’s incessant darkness? I welcome your comments. Please share this post if it resonates with you. Thank you for reading!