Spending Lives

June 29 2011

What do you do

for a living

we ask,

shaking hands

making small talk.

Hoping to get the measure

of the man.

(Or woman, I hasten to add.)

Because you have to earn your living,

justify this life

keep busy.

Taking long walks,

having an inner life,

the dialogue, that goes on

when your eyes get that glazed distracted look

don’t count

in the arithmetic

of success.

Or status.

Say “housewife”, for example,

not only politically incorrect

but old-fashioned

patriarchal

oppressed.

Or “homemaker” instead.

Which sounds suitably industrious,

but could use a touch

more ambition.

“Mother”, though, is beyond admonition,

the Madonna

the giver of life.

So, what have I done

today?

I walked, I read, I wrote

performed the usual chores.

I enjoyed the company of my dog

who makes it her business

to play;

constantly busy,

and very good

at sleep.

I observed, and thought

about what I saw.

Which leaves me unsure

  —  is this a life

or a living?

We talk about spending our lives,

as if we started out with a given sum

and ended up

with nothing.

Funny, how it works

the other way ‘round

  —  the blank slate

on which we write ourselves,

until it’s filled

with dense illegible scrawl.

Too small

to contain everything.

There are revealing cultural differences in how we meet and greet. The Chinese ask:  “Have you eaten?” This is a culture that has known privation, a people who are aware of their history. Apparently, North American Indians ask “Where are you from, and who are your people?”  But we in the so-called West are modern, and believe in competition, individualism, and progress.  As if what you do is who you are. Anyway, that’s where this poem started.