This Evening
by Maja Trochimczyk

It will be that way but for a moment—the light is dying
now as sunset dissolves into nightfall. The sky is the color
of soap bubbles—orange to pink to celadon and pearl gray,
with cloud stripes, below an expanse of periwinkle, a cupola
ready to burst open.

The hues are more seductive, for there is smoke in the air,
the scent of dying trees, grass, bushes perishing in flames
somewhere to bring us their last offering. We watch
the sky glowing like soap bubbles—vivid, shifting, translucent.

Are we the most alive at the edge of dying? The most
attuned to living after we are told we have a year,
or maybe a month to put things in order? We admire
the bright maples and ginkgo trees covered in splendor
of scarlet and gold just before leaves fall. This is the sign
of passing, a farewell to their happy life.

Aren’t the iridescent hues of the sky telling us
that we still have time, so little time, yet time enough
to fully immerse ourselves in this moment, to reach
the zero point of here and now and be aware of its beauty?
 
We are content under the translucent sky of orange, gold,
silver and periwinkle, half-way between blue and violet,
just as we are half-way between life and death,
body and soul, heart and mind—suspended on an invisible
silver thread from the galaxy's web. One neuron
in the enormous mind of all stars, all beings, all trees,
all molecules of air and light. So much light!!!

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