We were in a burnt-out house of an 86 year old friend today,
Salvaging what we could of the many memories and things of her long life.

The smell of smoke still lingered, a month after the fire.

Four of us, she, my friend Joe and our friend Theresa,
Packing knickknacks and other collectibles, maybe valuable or not,
Looking for items of the past that might be valuable going forward,
Made me reflect how things do not make our lives.

On the way back to my friend’s new apartment she was telling me
Stories of the past, like the time she and one of her grandchildren came across a nineteen year old girl on a city bus. The girl had been institutionalized since she was eight and now was just sent out on a bus by herself, vulnerable to all.

My friend ended up signing paper work and taking the young woman from the mental health complex to her home,
Which was open to her children, grandchildren and many foster kids?
This is a memory that is valuable and a story of random kindness that needs to be passed on.

My friend is full of these kinds of stories and it is this that makes her life valuable,
Not all the stuff that was lost or we salvaged from the fire.

America is like a burning house. We ask with James Baldwin in the book The Fire Next Time
“Do I really want to be integrated into a burning house?”

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