The Last Day

Last Saturday John and I had pancakes for  breakfast and ran the dogs in the hills above Oak Creek. In the car we loaded a juke box, something we had picked up at an estate sale. It needed repairs so we had to drive it north about 40 miles; the Willamette valley was filled with a spritz of gentle rain and filtered sunlight from above. I was wearing polarized sunglasses because despite the rain, it seemed bright. John said "Look, look! They've sprayed something over the field!" I had to take the glasses off to see it: a valley completely filled with the spectrum of the rainbow, sunken as if it had lost the desire to arch, had given in to gravity. A bowl filled with ethereal color.

On this otherwise ordinary day I took a picture through the windshield and thought: it doesn't get any better.

Now it is a week later, Saturday night. 8:30 PM Pacific Time. Because it's the weekend in the blogosphere,  nobody is looking, so a perfect time to be introspective (like that's unusual).  I have just read a poem "The Last Day,"  and I've just looked at a photo from a week ago. What would The Last Day of the World look like, if you could choose it? The weather? What would you be doing?  For me, I'm thinking "last Saturday:" run in the hills, juke box, ride in the car with my best friend, bright mist, and color.

The Last Day

Patricia Fargnoli

Let's say it begins at six o'clock
on April's first morning when the sun has risen
to vibrate three inches above the mountain
and light shimmies along three wires looped
from the tall trunk of the pine to the house
where you are not awake yet,
though a few birds sail the lower air
near the just-thawed ground. Boughs still
heavy with cones lie scattered, and beyond the stolid
granite church with its black windows,
one bird sings the sweetest notes into being.
Stalks are rising—exploding in yellow
in last year's garden and one ladybug climbs
the screen—as if it had all the time in the world.

"The Last Day" by Patricia Fargnoli, from Duties of the Spirit. Tupelo Press