We could all use a little resurrection –
Especially now, with winter hanging on,
Still biting the air in the early morning,
Chilling the wind, even threatening frost.
Gods, men, and daisies – all are prone to die,
And crave rebirth, and bloom in the new sun,
Stretching their infant bodies to the sky
Where summer blue has tremblingly begun.
On the last day of your life,
You will wake as usual
From dreams that vanish
In the cooler light of day;
And, God willing, you will make coffee,
And sip it slowly as you like,
Because there is no particular hurry –
Especially now, with everything behind –
Everything but the cooling coffee,
The warming sun,
And the rest of your life.
When we have had every conversation,
Tasted every flavor of ice cream,
Been every place, and met everyone there,
Heard every song and read every book,
There may be a moment when we think, Enough.
Let others live now, in their own sweet time.
We two have had, have seen, have known our fill,
And nothing to us remains but silence.
We will take a moment
To honor that feeling,
And let the lassitude
Of a hundred centuries
Poison our limbs –
A long, long moment,
To let desire
Drain from us like sand.
Then something will stir
In the ancient heart of us,
Or some freshening breeze
Blow in fresh news,
And all the life we thought to leave behind us,
All the too much and too many and too many times,
Will turn to fire, liquid in the vein –
And we will need to do it all again.
Because the soul, such as it is, is young:
Eternally young, as young as blood,
And time itself has no need to grow old,
And life is time, and has no need to die.
Well, every day is Leap Day –
Utterly unique –
Stolen, unearned,
Unsought, mysterious –
A calendar anomaly
In which a few things occur.
Every day is a little life, really –
A chance to show the world
What you truly care about –
So every day,
In a way,
Is February 29th –
But today is especially,
And it’s as good a reason
To celebrate as any other
Reason I know.
