Living

Roger Hall

Living

The fire in leaf and grass

so green it seems

each summer the last summer.

The wind blowing, the leaves

shivering in the sun,

each day the last day.

A red salamander

so cold and so

easy to catch, dreamily

moves his delicate feet

and long tail. I hold

my hand open for him to go.

Each minute the last minute.

Denise Levertov

Have you ever had this? Where the colours around you, or the moment you're in is so vivid, so piercingly alive, that you can't imagine life going on? For me it's mostly been instances - times when I thought "This must be the pinnacle. The very sharpest point of sight, the place and moment when everything has come together into focus." It should be the end. The culmination. Like last things. I love how Levertov moves through time and brings her scope ever tighter - "Each summer the last summer...each day the last day...each minute the last minute." It's a deep pattern running through our lives, the fact that we are most aware and awake and alive when Death is in the room. I don't mean in a macabre sense, I mean in the sense of knowing how to fully immerse ones' self because time is passing, seasons, days and minutes are leaving our hands. Last things ask us to pay attention, to absorb, to embrace. Leave the lesser things behind, reach for what matters. It won't always be here.