Transcript

I’m Major Jackson and this is The Slowdown.

One of my favorite moments driving the roads in rural Vermont is when I pass a car or truck and its driver lifts a set of fingers from the steering wheel. It’s a neighborly acknowledgement from behind a windshield. It’s a greeting, not too dissimilar, from my youth when someone, only vaguely known, would give a slight head nod as they walked by. That upward lift of the face and tough look from an older teenager was the equivalent of “I see you, playa.”

Sometimes, the passing driver will signal their greeting with two fingers, typically the index and forefinger. This sometimes feels more officious, a salute. I would worry when a driver only threw up one finger. I couldn’t tell if it was a diss or if they were being lazy.

The indelible beauty of small-town connectedness is one reason I choose to spend part of my year here. We’ve just one grocery store that is mostly well-stocked, a library, an art space with the ironic name BigTown Gallery, a stunning restaurant, Maple Soul, run by husband-wife team Jim and Jen Huntington, a gas station, and a village square that hosts our well-attended farmer’s market on Friday afternoons. One can listen to retired PBS film documentary producer Rob Gardner and the band The Peavine Boys entertain townsfolk while buying flowers, organic meats, and ceramic art from local artists. Speaking as a writer, though, the true jewel of our town is Sandy’s Bakery and Bookstore, where neighbors and friends meet for coffee and breakfast sandwiches, and where I find rare first editions.

Since moving to the quaint village of Rochester, I come to expect visible signs of welcome everywhere. What matters in life is that space between us, formulated by philosopher Martin Buber as I-Thou. It’s a sacred space of shared existence where we feel each other’s uniqueness and feel our common humanity.

Today’s attentive poem fosters a consciousness in which we view our lives as more in relation to each other, as close as two small letters.

Us
by Zaffar Kunial

If you ask me, us takes in undulations -
each wave in the sea, all insides compressed - 
as if, from one coast, you could reach out to

the next; and maybe it’s a Midlands thing
but when I was young, us equally meant me,
says the one, ‘Oi, you, tell us where yer from’;

and the way supporters share the one fate - 
I, being one, am Liverpool no less - 
cresting the Mexican wave of we or us,

a shore-like state, two places at once, God
knows what’s in it; and, at opposite ends
my heart’s sunk at separations of us.

When it comes to us, colour me unsure.
Something in me, or it, has failed the course.
I’d love to think I could stretch to it - us - 

but the waves therein are too wide for words.
I hope you get, here, where I’m coming from.
I hope you’re with me on this - between love

and loss - where I’d give myself away, stranded
as if the universe is a matter of one stress.
Us. I hope, from here on, I can say it

and though far-fetched, it won’t be too far wrong.

“Us” from US by Zaffar Kunial. Published by Faber & Faber, 2018. Copyright © Zaffar Kunial. Reproduced by permission of Zaffar Kunial c/o Rogers, Coleridge and White Ltd., 20 Powis Mews, London, W11 1JN.