Category: Linda Pastan

I’m only leaving you for a handful of days, but it feels as though I’ll be gone forever—- the way the door closes behind me with such solidity, the way my suitcase carries everything I’d need for an eternity of traveling light. I’ve left my hotel number on your desk, instructions about the dog and heating dinner. But like the weather front they warn is on its way with its switchblades of wind and ice, our lives have minds of their own.

Just looking at themI grow greedy, as if they werefreshly baked loaveswaiting on their shelvesto be broken open–that oneand that–and I make my choicein a mood of exalted luck,browsing among themlike a cow in sweetest pasture.For life is continuousas long as they waitto be read–these inked pathsopening into the future, pageafter page, every bookits own receding horizon.And I hold them, one in each hand,a curious ballast weighing mehere to earth.