The Finest Thing

High Angle Rescue Drill, Firefighter Ian Wagner

Photos © 2012 Ian and Jennifer Wagner Family

On the deck

sipping the last of summer

from my glass of iced coffee,

I’m drenched in a moment

of luscious sunshine,

one of the few left before

autumn’s return.

I’m watching our youngest boys

with delight—

plastic swords and shields in their hands,

attacking The Alien, also known as

the small green sprinkler

with four arms

and a mind of its own.

A miniscule, slate blue butterfly

flits by

and then a larger one, white and clumsy—

meanders by too.

Does it know where it’s going? 

I like thinking it doesn’t,

it just floats along, discovering.

But I know as I watch

two crows

wave west over my roof,

looking so purposeful,

that there are jobs to do, of course—

and each one of us has our own.

A neighboring apple tree

is nearly full of green-gold apples,

three Asian pear trees are laden too—

our Polynesian neighbor

will fill sacks full of the succulent fruit soon,

drop them off on our porch,

with his brown-sugar fingers

and white smile, wrinkled.

My contentment spreads,

a drunken, giddy peace

in the listening to leaves rustling—

still clinging, green, to trees.

They will fall soon enough,

as time keeps its own pace.

I’ll savor this good day

with the gray day of remembering looming,

ashy, grating,

real—

for the grief of

New York’s Bravest, Best and Finest

and all who fell too soon.

But real, too, is the spirit

of what is the best of us.

And that has lived on.

I know it

in the browned fingers of giving,

in the bright laugh of the innocent,

and in your mouth on my neck—

like a breeze,

like sunshine.

I am reminded,

here, in this moment,

not eclipsed

by any large, evil scheme,

that come what may,

some will continue to Give,

Sacrifice,

Love.

And that is still The Finest Thing

on any given day.

© 2013 Jennifer Wagner

 

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