"It was a miracle."

poet Donald Hall

Nearly four years ago--on June 22, 2016--Writer's Almanac posted a poem by Donald Hall (1928-2018), a poem called "Summer Kitchen."

That poem captured me, and I've been in its thrall ever since. I memorized it, and now I mumble it a few times a week so I don't forget it.

Here it is ...

Summer Kitchen

In June’s high light she stood at the sink

            With a glass of wine,

And listened for the bobolink,

And crushed garlic in late sunshine.

I watched her cooking, from my chair.

            She pressed her lips

Together, reached for kitchenware,

And tasted sauce from her fingertips.

“It’s ready now. Come on,” she said.

            “You light the candle.”

We ate, and talked, and went to bed,

And slept. It was a miracle.

“Summer Kitchen” by Donald Hall from The Selected Poems of Donald Hall. © Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2015

Lately, for a variety of reasons, this poem has had a haunting effect on me. It's really a simple thing, isn't it? A man is watching a woman prepare supper. We get a few details about what she's doing. She finishes the preparation; she tells him to light the candle.

And then the last two lines, which stun me with all that's unsaid. We ate, and talked, and went to bed, / And slept. It was a miracle.

Before the final four words, the portion of those lines dealing with a list of what they did during and after supper is almost crushingly mundane, isn't it? We know very little about what they ate (something with sauce), what they talked about, or what they did in bed, or who went to sleep first, or ... anything.

And then that final sentence hits you like a rock from David's sling: It was a miracle.

Yes, the mundane, the quotidian, is a miracle. The moments with your partner--the quiet routines--the safety in the normal--the realization (implied here) that it's all evanescent--that the miracle is that it's happening at all.

We know that it's impermanent, of course. We know that things will fall apart--we know the truth of what Auden said in another poem I love ("As I Walked Out One Evening"), "O let not Time deceive you, / You cannot conquer Time." As Hall himself says (see video link below), he wrote the poem after the death of his wife, Jane Kenyon.

Shakespeare has more than one sonnet about this--but in Sonnet 73 he says it succinctly in the final couplet: "This thou perceiv'st, which makes thy love more strong, / To love that well which thou must leave ere long."

And in these lockdown days, I have found I understand even more acutely the increasing poignancy of Hall's words, of Auden's, of Shakespeare's--of the piercing pain of mortality. Being with Joyce--doing our routines--reading, writing, cooking, talking, laughing, streaming--all of this, I've realized more than ever, is miraculous. And horrifyingly brief.

Link to Donald Hall reading his poem.