Spinning into Tomorrow

Mark is feeling better! While walking laps with him around the nurse’s station, I read this poem that one of the nurses has written on a whiteboard:

Round and round time turns,
And so it may be that once more
I shall meet summer.
But this day, this night,
These will never come again.

Kyogoku Tamekane
(1254-1332)
Japan)

I would like to go for a walk with Kyogoku Tamekane. I think similar thoughts often, myself. On Fridays, I frequently think—Hooray! It’s Friday! A weekend to relax, to work on my own projects, to be able to call a little of time my own. But then I also think—I will never get to live this week again. This Friday marks time that will never come back.

At 55, I am increasingly aware of time’s passage, of death’s doorway away from Earth-time and into a new experience. I feel pretty certain that I will gladly pass through that door when the time comes, but in the meantime I don’t want to miss out on anything here.

I am so glad I went hiking last summer. I mean my Big Hike, the 50-mile solo hike. On my last night in the woods alone, I lay in my little tent and felt the woods around me. I imagined that I could see all those river drainages, all the millions of trees, the shoulders of Mt. Hood, the deer and bear and other creatures each in their place. And as I lay there, on my back, I was certain I felt the earth spinning beneath my shoulders and my hips, spinning and spinning away from yesterday and into tomorrow.