Quick now

Oh what dew
these mortals be.
Dawn to dark.
One long breath.

Today a pink rose in a vase
on the table.
Tomorrow, petals.

Jim Harrison & Ted Kooser. Braided Creek: A Conversation in Poetry. Copper Canyon Press, 2003.

Weekend with Sue was a whole rose-window of moments. Books about cathedral-building and standing stones, the drive to build spaces for connection with the eternal. I read to her as she painted, we lost ourselves in absorption. Clerestory. Sarsen stones, flying buttresses. Mortice and tenon. Levers and plumb lines. How our progenitors filled the time, reached beyond self, attempted to hold back impermanence. Saturday at dusk we strolled in Lone Fir cemetery where someone had left a mirror on a gravestone, as if we needed a reminder to laugh.

Sunday morning we woke to difficult inner weather--felt our way through disappointed expectations and old sensitivities with careful listening. In the afternoon we re-watched the incomparable Judi Dench play Mrs. Brown. At night we joined Stu Sugarman for a rollicking dinner, told adventure tales and enjoyed each other around the table. Stu started in marine biology, trying to save the oceans in the Everglades. He left the oceans for law and specialized in defending protesters, his life a testament to possibility. We meet him building an activism of silence, meditating toward justice.

Looking back over it all on Monday morning, we marvel at the journey two old women can make in a weekend. Quick, before our time is up, this moment. Don't miss a thing.