This is What the Living Do

 

This is what the living do:
we wake up each morning to the day,
our beds a time capsule,
carrying us through years
of dreams and memories.

I closed my eyes, in bliss, at forty,
when I opened them this morning,
incomprehensibly, I am eighty.

I put out seed for the morning sparrows,
watch them hopping, while I make
my cup of coffee, because
this is what the living do; we have
our rituals, our small comforts,
our ways of coping, our day after day
of sameness, moving us inexorably
to an unknown day up ahead
that we don’t like to think about.

But, when we do, we remember
to cherish these small blessings,
this glorious ordinary made special
by the pandemic, which so easily
can take it all away.

I remember
to be grateful for the gifts.

Yesterday I carried my brown bag
of groceries home from the CoOp.
The sun was so warm; two smiling friends
walked towards me. We stopped, and chatted.
We talked about our hair, which needed cutting.
 We stood there, laughing in the sun,
hands poking at our heads,
glad to have seen and spoken with other humans
on this sunny warm morning
in Clayoquot Sound.

The waves were big yesterday; the surfers
were happy. I walked to the big log and sat,
watched the breakers come rolling in,
felt my heart expand with the prayer I recite
every time I am there: thank you, thank you,
thank you, for this: for the gift 

of living here, for the beauty,

for the many gifts I’ve been given.

This is what the living do: we remember.
On this beach, I walked for miles and years
with an exuberant, big black wolf.
And now I live alone.
I visit the sea. I am still living,
less exuberantly, but no less gratefully.
I remember him.
I remember it all.

I wrote this poem from the title of Marie Howe's poem What the Living Do