Lorraine A Padden

public kindness

The scrum between flights deposits me next to a woman on crutches shepherding two small girls into the restroom. Once a stall opens, the younger follows her mother’s lead but her older daughter resists. I nod at her mom and she tells us to wait just outside the door. We spend the next few minutes comparing designs on our dresses that both happen to involve chickens, hers pink and mine blue. 

featherweight
how wings
encircle a nest

---

Note: The title, “public kindness,” is borrowed from a Shakespeare’s “Sonnet 36.”

---

About the Author

Lorraine A Padden is a Touchstone Award–winning poet whose honors also include prizes from Tricycle Magazine, the Haiku Society of America, the Tokutomi International Haiku Competition, and the National Endowment for the Arts, among others. Upwelling, her first collection of haiku and related short forms, was published by Red Moon Press in 2022. Find more at lorrainepadden.com.

---