Six months ago I was not looking forward to winter, and I got really into a Billy Collins poem called Shoveling Snow with Buddha.
If I have a favorite Billy Collins poem, it’s definitely not Shoveling Snow With Buddha. But the poem makes winter sound pleasant, almost bearable.
I knew this winter wasn’t going to have any of the winter things I like. I wouldn’t get to look for outfits to wear to winter parties. I wouldn’t get to visit my mom and have her shower me with compliments on my ability to cook something unimpressive like pancakes. I wouldn’t get to go to a holiday concert with Boaz and have one of the best naps of my life during it. Shoveling Snow with Buddha made something I knew this winter would definitely have - shoveling - seem likable. If I were ten years younger I would call the poem snowcore, but honestly I’m not completely sure I’m using that term correctly.
We only have one shovel, so now that winter is actually here I shovel alone in the mornings and think about the poem. Buddha is pretty quiet, so shoveling alone is pretty similar to shoveling with him. Maybe that’s why Billy Collins chose Buddha to shovel with in the poem instead of Oprah, or Terry Gross, or Buzz the Honey Nut Cheerios bee. I think about this a lot while I’m shoveling. It’s a lot of time to think about one poem, which I guess is what poems are for.
One morning my thinking was interrupted when someone walked up and offered to help me shovel - the neighbor who likes to high-five me.
“No thank you.” I said. He started shoveling our sidewalk anyway.
I shoveled the opposite end, silently switching gears from poems to high-five refusals. This man was definitely going to want to high five again. If there were ever a time to high-five, it would be after shoveling snow together. And now I’d have to refuse someone who had ignored a different refusal just a few minutes earlier.
I decided on the line “No thanks, I’m not doing high-fives today.” and practiced saying it confidently and casually to myself from my end of the sidewalk. I liked that it implied I had a very specific and secret reason not to high five people on this day in particular. Maybe a resolution, or a wrist injury, who knows.
I decided that if he ignored my refusal and just reached for me, I could easily outrun him. I decided this man was not high-fiving me today, no matter what. This is the hill I die on, I told myself quietly from my end of the sidewalk.
I assumed he’d offered to shovel so he could talk to me more, but we didn’t talk at all.
Here’s part of Shoveling Snow with Buddha
But here we are, working our way down the driveway,
one shovelful at a time.
We toss the light powder into the clear air.
We feel the cold mist on our faces.
And with every heave we disappear
and become lost to each other
in these sudden clouds of our own making,
these fountain-bursts of snow.
This is so much better than a sermon in church,
I say out loud, but Buddha keeps on shoveling.
This is the true religion, the religion of snow,
and sunlight and winter geese barking in the sky,
I say, but he is too busy to hear me.
He has thrown himself into shoveling snow
as if it were the purpose of existence,
as if the sign of a perfect life were a clear driveway
you could back the car down easily
and drive off into the vanities of the world
with a broken heater fan and a song on the radio.
After shoveling a sidewalk square in silence for a while, my neighbor walked over and I took four steps back.
“Well I think I’d better go inside.” he said.
“Good idea.” I said, as though I had any say in anything.
I said “Thanks for the shoveling help” but told myself I wasn’t thanking him for shoveling part of my sidewalk after I asked him not to, I was just thanking him for generally shoveling the world, as we all do.
He walked away without high-fiving me, and I shoveled the rest of the sidewalk by myself, just me and my shovel. If that isn’t snowcore I honestly don’t know what is. Maybe snowcore doesn’t exist.
Not much news:
I had a comic in the New York Times a few weekends ago, and this weekend it got reprinted with a letter to the editor from an Oregon librarian reminding everyone that public libraries are still checking out books. She complimented my comic twice in the letter! Public libraries are still open.
Raccoon pins are still for sale, from my friends at Lost Lust Supply.
Boaz thinks the next newsletter should be about his interest in plants, let him know if you agree.
Oh, a newsletter about plants and Boaz would be so cool!
I for one would love to hear about Boaz and plants and Boaz's interest in plants! (Boaz did not pay me to write this comment, but I am happy to send him my Venmo handle if he'd like to...) :D