how do you create community? (a poem)

How to you create community?

I don’t know.

A hundred ways.

A thousand ways.

But,

how do you kill community?

I can tell you one thing

sure to do the job.

Be self-sufficient.

Always have enough.

Always have it together.

Always be a giver.

Always have all the tools you need.

Never need to borrow a sewing needle.

Never need a cup of sugar.

Never tell anyone you're breaking down.

Never need anyone.

Your pride,

your insistence on competency,

your unwillingness to be a burden,

on us

when it is the proper time for you to collapse

may be the end of us all.

Knowing what time it truly is,

or knowing how to know the time at all,

you,

needing our help,

being unable to continue without it,

you,

not knowing

how to do everything,

creates the occasion

for the village to reconstitute itself

and know itself again.