Reset Eighteen, Day Twenty-Six

The air tonight has a bit of chill, but not much, and also carries the sense of spring. Things are growing. It smells green. No creatures are visiting my yard, there is no rustling in the bushes, no owls are hooting, and there are no frogs singing, but it still feels alive. It reminds me of other nights which I can't quite recall, though I know they took place. I imagine my footsteps falling on sidewalks now hundreds of miles away, flowers spilling over garden walls I haven't seen in decades, hear the rustling of new leaves that have long since returned to the soil, feel the touch of night breezes now dispersed. Once-warm streetlamp light now light years away in cold space casts vague shadows in my memory. I look up at the moon, which will be full when it rises tonight. It looks nearer than my own past.




Sunday Verse

Polish poet Adam Zagajewski died last Sunday. He accomplished quite a bit more than I have. I was about five months old when he was born. Rest in Peace, year brother.

Moment

by Adam Zagajewski


In the Romanesque church round stones
that ground so many prayers and generations
kept humble silence and shadows slept in the apse
like bats in winter furs.

We went out. The pale sun shone,
tinny music tinkled softly
from a car, two jays
studied us, humans,
threads of longing dangled in the air.

The present moment is shameless,
Taking its foolish liberties
Beside the wall
Of this tired old shrine,

awaiting the millions of years to come,
future wars, geological eras,
cease-fires, treaties, changes in climate—
this moment—what is it—just

a mosquito, a fly, a speck, a scrap of breath,
entering the timid grass,
inhabiting stems and genes,
the pupils of our eyes.

This moment, mortal as you or I,
was full of boundless, senseless,
silly joy, as if it knew
something we didn’t