At one of my partner sites for the Writing Home project, after a writing session I usually stop by the cubicle of the senior services  program staff person to say how things went. Usually I am full of stories, how wonderful people’s creativity and imagination and play and writing were, and how much fun we had, and how kind  and supportive people are with each other.

What kind of support an I talking about? Sometimes a good poem opens a door to people to write about their own experience…poems like “Vision Test”, by Patricia Kirkpatrick or Breathing, by “Mark O’Brien” can encourage people to get pretty deep pretty fast into their own medical or body experiences or traumas. Most of the bodies in a room full of people mostly 65 and older have been through some stuff. And I’ve seen a lot of moments where group participants seem to know how to provide just the right environment of empathy and support to people to move through the re-living an experience that writing can sometimes be.

Sometimes this support is between people who already know each other, as neighbors or from exercise class, or craft group. Sometimes the support is between people who started as strangers a week or two before when they walked into poetry group. They have become close through writing in community.

So one day, without going into a lot of detail (because we’ve agreed in our Writing Home sessions, that “What happens in poetry group stays in poetry group”)  I’m  describing a few  of the day’s lovely moments to Jeanne, who’s worked for decades at the same organization running the senior center activities and overseeing the Meals on Wheels program.

I believe in the power of writing sessions as a way of creating community, I tell her, but it’s one thing to say it and another to see it in action.

Jeanne smiles and stops me, “Naomi,” she says, “People are good.”

I have known Jeanne a long time and I know her to be wise and kind. And at first I shake my head to myself. I have a hard time making a blanket statement like this: “People are good.”

I grew up on the South Side of Chicago in a time when homicide rates exceeded even the ugly pitch of current headlines. By the time I left Chicago in the nineties I’d been burgled, robbed or assaulted 5 times; two of the incidents involved a gun or knife.

To put it another way, I grew up in a time and place where it was important to be nobody’s fool, where wariness and skepticism were important values. “People are good” was not imbibed in my baby bottle.

And then there is a certain amount of ugliness going on in the world around me.

So I do not lightly come to the idea of innate goodness.

But on a daily basis, through these little writing sessions at libraries and senior centers, I see people acting out of a positive e hunger for community for goodness, for ways to help each other.

~People bring each other cookies and treats.

~They offer to write for those whose hands don’t do it alone.

to read for those who cannot read.

~They listen.

~They hold each other’s pain.

~They managed on the day after the election to create a space of healing, without getting into politics. (how many times have I yearned for this same combination of compassion and restraint in social settings since then!)

These folks are not just writing wonderful poems; they might be teaching me how to live in the world.

So what do I say to the proposition: “People are good”

When Jeanne says this, I an silent. I don’t know. I’ve got my upbringing; I’ve got the news…I don’t always feel I am good. I have certainly seen other settings where poets don’t behave well; I wouldn’t say they are bad. but I don’t know if I would say they are good.

I can say:

People seem hungry for good.

I can say people have goodness in them and that poetry group, on a good day, can bring out that goodness. It’s one of the privileges of this work to watch it.