One

August 21, 2005
4:20 PM

Alone at the reservoir.

I'm waiting for my hair to grow.

And I wish it would snow.
The likelihood is grandly slim,
as I lay here drenched in summer's heat,
bare as convention allows a woman.

I ought not wish to hasten time.
("Death is in the cost...")
All I or any have ever had is
Now.

And we miss it.
Damn if we miss it every day.
We miss that days and nights
are little more than sun and moon,
birds and stars,
dark and light taking turns
in the sky.

This day is the same as the one before,
eternally hence,
and so it also is with night.
There is only one darkness;
only one light;
only one sky, one moon,
one sun or absence of the same.

It is we who are ever turning,
ever changing,
ever running round in circles
to accomplish what we call "today"
before what we call "tomorrow",
what we never see,
comes.

There is only Now;
only who we are, which entails
every yesterday we've ever invented;
every tomorrow we've never seen,
nor ever will.

There is only Now;
only today,
and when we fail to see it,

we fail to live.


"Death is in the cost..." taken from Wendell Berry, _Sabbaths_.