One Last Day

We should live at least one day like it’s the last.
Not our own last, but the last;
as if the world and time itself
is out of ideas for what comes next.

On a Tuesday, say, or a Wednesday,
you could wake into a day, uncertain.
That your lashes flicker open is a blessing,
the pillow under you head was never so soft,
the breath from your nose, a caress.

All day you dance with the unknown,
everything possible, nothing assured.
What surprise at each continued thing!

Relief at the sound of your loved one’s voice
rising and falling in the next room;
the floor, there where you left it
ready to meet each step.

A cup that continues to exist
as the water pours and pours
and the wall clock ticks again
and again.
Magic.

The cat miaows and you have an ear to hear it;
kibble still exists, and the bowl.
The cat keeps being there
keeps eating,
being there, eating,
and you laugh, delighted.

Emboldened, you whistle
and the melody remembers,
unfolding into an air that continues to carry it.
Time exists because Moonlight Sonata
keeps arriving note by note.

Do it until the sun goes down,
stay at the day’s leading edge
waiting to see what happens,
the world rising up everywhere you look,
collapsing back down as you turn away.

One moment transforms into the next
such that you forget
the day is uncertain.
And at day’s end, relief
that the bed catches you,
that the world catches you each day,
forgetting, as we do
that any one day could be the last.