It was a day in June, all lawn and
sky,
the kind that gives you no choice
but to unbutton your shirt
and sit outside in a rough wooden
chair.
And if a glass of ice tea and an
anthology
of seventeenth-century devotional
poetry
with a dark blue cover are
available,
then the picture can hardly be
improved.
I remember a fly kept landing on
my wrist,
and two black butterflies
with white and red wing-dots
bobbed around my head in the
bright air.
I could feel the day offering
itself to me,
and I wanted nothing more
than to be in the moment –but
which moment?
Not that one, or that one, or that
one,
or any of those that were
scuttling by
seemed perfectly right for me.
Plus, I was too knotted up with
questions
about the past and his tall,
evasive sister, the future.
What churchyard held the bones of
George Herbert?
Why did John Donne’s wife die so
young?
And more pressingly,
what could we serve the vegetarian
twins
we had invited for dinner that
evening
not knowing then that they travel
with their own grapes?
And who was the driver of that
pickup
flying down the road toward the
single railroad track?
And so the priceless moments of
the day
were squandered one by one –
or more likely several thousand at
a time –
with quandary and pointless
interrogation.
All I wanted was to be a pea of
being
at rest inside the pod of time,
but that was not going to happen
today,
I had to admit to myself
as I closed the blue book on the
face
of Thomas Traherne and returned to
the house
where I lit a flame under a pot
full of water where some eggs were
afloat,
and while they were cooking,
stared into a little oval mirror
by the sink
just to see if that crazy glass
had anything particular to say to
me today.
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