This Night, Wild and Billowing

Have you ever seen
anything
in your life
more wonderful

than the way the sun,
every evening,
relaxed and easy,
floats toward the horizon

and into the clouds or the hills,
or the rumpled sea,
and is gone--
and how it slides again

out of the blackness,
every morning,
on the other side of the world,
like a red flower

streaming upward on its heavenly oils,
say, on a morning in early summer,
at its perfect imperial distance--
and have you ever felt for anything
such wild love--
do you think there is anywhere, in any language,
a word billowing enough
for the pleasure

that fills you,
as the sun
reaches out,
as it warms you

as you stand there,
empty-handed--
or have you too
turned from this world--

or have you too
gone crazy
for power,
for things?
(The Sun, Mary Oliver)

I did not expect––nor could I have––the way this day would end, with the most perfect sunset of my life, happy with my dog in the park, the two of us grinning and chasing each other, leaning into one another, rolling in the grass and laughing. I know that this night was my reward for a long day, the first hard day of back-to-school Rush and that I earned every second of it.








If there is a god or an afterlife, this night––with light liquid and boiling––is the way I want to be greeted there for I can't imagine more perfect colors or scents or contentment. If I gain nothing else in this life I could die content having stretched out on my back on this night and watched it come on and fade away, a memory as alive as the heart that beats in my chest, as heavy as the breath of the dog laying next to me.