"to survive it, and then to depict / a tree, the sun, the sea"

choosing to remember love alone

I Will Remember Love (valentine) by John Windsor, 1860/69

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I am in love, hence free to live

by Vera Pavlova

To live until the end of the world,
to see with my own eyes
what it will be like: a comet,
a bomb, a volcano, or a tsunami,
to survive it, and then to depict
a tree, the sun, the sea
on the icy tablets
of nuclear winter.

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Dear Friends,

I’ve hesitated to share this poem because the last two lines are dark. Yet something about it keeps calling to me to share.

Above the winter, it says, I am free to live! I am free to live until the end of the world. If such an end arrives, I will see what it will be like, then to draw the evidence of beauty on whatever stones are left nearby.

I am in love with life, hence free to describe it. To assert it. To record and thus continue it.

Oh heavy heart. The weight of even lifting a spoon. Oh the buoy of rising to support a loved one or stranger, forgetting grief in order to offer a smile, a nervous system to regulate with, a bag of food. Oh the things we build in an instant, or in a decade.

Oh light heart. The surprise openings. The comets. The song I find myself humming that I didn’t even realize you were humming, too.

What will I record today? What will you? What shall we?