Counting Down - Dec 27 2020

 

Counting Down

Dec 27 2020

In the dead of winter

we count down to spring.

We do what the living do,

muddling through

day after day.

We slog through slush

in salt encrusted boots.

Shovel knee-high snow

grunting and grumbling with every chuck

of the heavy white stuff.

And feel the cold north wind

cut the pinched dry skin

of uncovered faces.

And when spring finally comes

with its mud and bugs and Biblical rains

find we're impatiently waiting for summer;

hunkering down to chores,

cleaning up the usual mess

then endlessly finding more.

Except

that when summer's at its height

it's too damned hot,

and those long torpid days

start to weigh after a while.

When the lawn always needs cutting

and mosquitoes keep buzzing

and there's pressure to do something cool

before the season is over

and who looks good in shorts?

If only fall were here,

with its temperate days and comfortable nights

and the melancholy turning of leaves.

Which never got raked

before the first wet snow

so they'll still be there next spring,

sodden and heavy and smelling of mould

in the chilly grey thaw.

But yet, we keep wanting more of it.

Of change, of chores

of life.

Of doing what the living do

day after day,

because it is what it is

and there is always hope.

Grunting and grumbling and feeling ourselves

in body and spirit and mind,

that good gratified tired

of more or less having done

and being fully alive.

I can only take – at best – partial ownership of this poem. Or you could call it homage instead of derivative, and excuse my lack of originality. Because it was directly inspired by a poem by Marie Howe. It first appeared in The Atlantic in 1994, and was just republished today on the website.

It's very much in the spirit I like: the small and diurnal and closely observed. It immediately pulled me in, right from the opening line. First, for its simple conversational tone. And second, because it's a thought that has crossed my mind a lot lately; perhaps as a form of consolation and constructive reframing: while suffering through crappy things, and feeling it's just one thing after another, trying to view it as being engaged and immersed in the stuff of life. Completion isn't the point. Happiness and fulfillment aren't perpetually moving targets, to be realized someday when everything is finally finished. This is very much like calling up the cliché “plenty of time to sleep when you're dead”. “Doing what the living do” is perfect! What else is there? What am I waiting for?

I've heard the expression “It is what it is” repeatedly criticized. Maybe because it sounds not only banal, but like giving up – a kind of shrugging passivity, a defeated nihilism. But I see it as gimlet-eyed realism. I admire the spirit of stoicism it represents: a combination of serene acceptance, personal humility, and steady dogged determination. “It is what it is” is not simply a throwaway “whatever”, but a deeply philosophical statement.

What follows is the introduction that preceded the poem, and then the piece itself:

Marie Howe’s “What the Living Do” begins with an address to her brother: The kitchen sink has been clogged for days, she writes. The Drano won’t work ... it’s winter again … the heat’s on too high.

The poem might seem at first like a list of complaints, but it’s a list of gratitudes. Most readers won’t know that Howe’s younger brother John died of AIDS-related complications in 1989. John is the one to whom she reports these seemingly meaningless details, of the sky and the groceries and the spilled coffee. These are the details that Howe is left with, and that her brother can’t experience anymore. This is why she is “gripped by a cherishing” when she catches a glimpse of her reflection, hair blowing in the wind.

It’s also a proclamation of tenderness for humanity. We want whoever to call or not call, a letter, a kiss — we want more and more and then more of it.

Faith Hill

What the Living Do

Johnny, the kitchen sink has been clogged for days, some utensil probably fell down there.
And the Drano won't work but smells dangerous, and the crusty dishes have piled up

waiting for the plumber I still haven't called. This is the everyday we spoke of.
It's winter again: the sky's a deep, headstrong blue, and the sunlight pours through

the open living-room windows because the heat's on too high in here and I can't turn it off.
For weeks now, driving, or dropping a bag of groceries in the street, the bag breaking,

I've been thinking: This is what the living do. And yesterday, hurrying along those
wobbly bricks in the Cambridge sidewalk, spilling my coffee down my wrist and sleeve,

I thought it again, and again later, when buying a hairbrush: This is it.
Parking. Slamming the car door shut in the cold. What you called that yearning.

What you finally gave up. We want the spring to come and the winter to pass. We want
whoever to call or not call, a letter, a kiss — we want more and more and then more of it.

But there are moments, walking, when I catch a glimpse of myself in the window glass,
say, the window of the corner video store, and I'm gripped by a cherishing so deep

for my own blowing hair, chapped face, and unbuttoned coat that I'm speechless:
I am living. I remember you.

Marie Howe