Doing Something Useful

As I write this, two men are in my kitchen, sanding and sawing and hammering. I know them slightly, they are good men, a father and son team that restores old floors. We discovered a fir floor underneath the linoleum of our kitchen, and we hired these men to take off the layer of gunk—linoleum adhesive, I suppose—and make the floor smooth. Some of the boards were damaged and there were other places where non-flooring boards had been inserted in a remodeling project of the past , so our workers had to replace some of these boards with fir, carefully fitting in the tongue and grooved old fir pieces they had found at a store in Paulina.
The father of the team must be 75 years old but he crawls around the floor on his knees with no knee pads (his son uses them) and seems happy in his work. He saw my boat in the garage and commented on it, saying, he found no pleasure in fishing: “A half hour on the lake and I’m ready to come in.” His joy seems to be his work. His son, who knows I recently retired, says to me, “What do you do with all your time, now that you’re retired.”

I hesitate to answer him. Shall I tell him that yesterday as they worked in the kitchen, I was upstairs, writing a poem. I have no doubt that crafting a poem is every bit as honorable as crafting a wood floor, but I’m quite sure that the local culture would not agree. We are a people who value useful things like floors more than poems whose value and use is questionable.

I could show him the poem, but I’m not sure it would convince him. It’s a pantun, a form that uses the second and fourth lines of the previous stanza as the first and third lines of the next stanza. The trick is to make the lines fit together—sort of like tongue and groove flooring. Sometimes the lines of a pantun can seem disconnected but usually a link of some kind can be found that gives a sort of coherence.

Above is the picture of the floor (which, incidentally, my wife and I stained and varnished). Below is the pantun.

My Father Counting Money at the Till

Happy-go-lucky is what the townsfolk called him,
I saw his darker, pensive side sometimes.
The Minnesota sun shines on the coldest days;
My father covered trouble with a whistle or a song.

I saw his darker, pensive side sometimes,
I saw him counting money at the till.
My father covered trouble with a whistle or a song,
The old song and dance that got him through the war.

I saw him counting money at the till
In the evening as we put the store to bed.
The old song and dance that got him through the war--
Was the music he made lament or lullaby?

In the evening as we put the store to bed,
The coins clinking in the tray could cast a spell.
Was the music he made lament or lullaby?
In those days men wore hats and whistled at their work.

The coins clinking in the tray could cast a spell,
A metronome that measured out the years.
In those days men wore hats and whistled at their work.
I used to break into song at the drop of a hat.

A metronome that measured out the years--
My father counting coins and singing in the store.
I used to break into song at the drop of a hat;
I have known the sadness of a twilight closing time.

My father counting coins and singing in the store,
Happy-go-lucky is what the townsfolk called him.
I have known the sadness of a twilight closing time.
The Minnesota sun shines on the coldest days.