Today

by Jack Buckingham

Imagine today was the last in a lifetime

The last you would live, and you knew upon waking,

Without knowing why, except that mortality

Shadows its flock like a ranging wolf

And picks off its prey when it chooses,

Without knowing how, to the raging flood

Of thoughts of terrible endings, enemies,

And a carpetbag of recent medical tests

And tossaway ailments that could have been checked

Without knowing when, exactly the time,

Except it would happen in the day's veering course.

To tell your loved ones scrambling for breakfast?

To keep them beside you, near, around you

This one uncommon time, in a family hurrah?

But if death swept tragically, then your children,

Your wife . . . not to be thought of again.

Better by far that they grieve unknowing

Than prepare a family grave yourself, and know.

So you drink in the rain of another morning

Tumbling from the bathrooms in sequence,

One with a project due this Wednesday

And barely half-way done, his kid sister

Bursting to leave, she's taller this season

And primed to be picked at the tryouts today

For shooting goals. You watch them through the blinds

Till next door's solid hedge blocks all vision

And propels them to vanishing points far beyond school.

Will you see them again tonight, or instead

Will they be seeing you? Suddenly troubled,

You call to your wife of a later appointment,

Retreat to the study, hope not to face her

This moment. Mumbling and late herself,

She pops in her head, little more, and sweeps awav

With the faintest scent of disquiet, puzzlement,

Alone now to wait, for there seems no reason

To soldier to work, or ring in excuses.

No question either of driving to the hills

And the fern-dripping walk to the crisp sound

Of lyrebirds, and the little wooden bridge to view

The roaring cascade of winter water, once more.

Driving, perhaps, is the means today, careering

Down hillsides, or a heart to stop beating

Remote in woodland, missing and fretted for.

And better to be outdoors, the house itself

Was for living, and you'd feel Janice would surely move

If she or the- kids returned home, to that.

So you sit on the landing, shiver a little

Beneath a slate grey sky. Pinpricks of drizzle

Are settling, and persist. The dog

Has shuffled off to a scrap of shelter,

Giving up thoughts that you'll play'

And the moments grow, and are lost, as day moves on,

And somehow you reflect, it occurs

In the blankness of day, with no umbrella

And a cascade unseen, that now you know

How you woke this morning and shook to see

That today was all your life, and then no more.

Return to the Eastern Writers Group's home page