The Duck in the Bathroom

As I receive more coverage this year I spend some of my time writing at one of the two local establishments.  Both serve delicious coffee.  The environs and coffee stimulate my thinking, but at the cost of at least one trip to the bathroom.

While taking care of business I look up from my target to note the portrait of a duck at eye level.  He seems to be laughing and I chuckle in response.  The owner of the Berkshire Country Store must have put the portrait there for that very response.  That in turn causes me to reflect on one of my two favorite Robert Frost poems.

The Tuft of Flowers begins when a lone farm worker “went to turn the grass once after one who mowed it in the dew before the sun.”  At first his thoughts turned to being alone with his chore on that day.  He concludes a lone existence to be the way of things, even when people work together.

A butterfly catches his sight and he follows the beautiful winged creature’s path until it alights on a tuft of flowers.  In appreciating the beauty of the flowers he feels a kinship with the butterfly.  Then he realizes that the flower still exists because the mower who came before him also appreciated their beauty and left them alone.  The lone farm worker, no longer feeling alone, imagines himself communicating with the mower:

”’Men work together,’ I told him from the heart, ‘whether they work together or apart.’”

With one of my favorite poems in mind I imagine telling Ryan:  “Well done! You got the chuckle out of me you wanted.”  Yet he knows that without me telling him.  If not me, then the other male customers taking care of business in his bathroom.  Being able to “feel each other” makes being human special, and helps to keep us from being alone.  It’s called empathy.

I enjoyed haying immensely when I worked on a farm sixty years after the 1913 publication of The Tuft of Flowers.  Times change.  Unlike Frost’s lone farm worker, the teamwork involved in picking up and stacking hay bales contributed to my joy.

Now when I pass by the fields I used to hay in 1973, tractors and trucks take care of all the tasks.  Two workers may be present, but usually just one, reverting back to the days of Frost’s poem.  Do the drivers still get to appreciate a beautiful tuft of flowers nowadays?  Who is to say?

We live in trying times.  We may look at the behaviors of others and feel estranged rather than connected.  If you get this feeling while in town may I suggest visiting the Berkshire Country Store?  Buy a cup of coffee, get a chuckle while using the bathroom, then give a nod to Ryan on your way out.  Tell him I sent you.