Each Minute

                                                  photo by Olga Butler Hopper

We are at The Farm in Rexford. I am packing to leave New York State 

and attend the University of Arizona, a two-day train-ride away. 

In the heat of an August afternoon in 1953, my littlest sister is trying to figure things out. 

The striped suitcase in the foreground was my mother's and has her initials O.B. on it; 

I will never give it back, My outfit is a "squaw skirt," 

 (Note:apparently, one can still get squaw skirts on Etsy!)

 three tiers of gathers on a waistband,

 and a blouse I made to wear with it of black fabric 

and some of the dark-pink-flowered skirt fabric with a black ground.

I am wearing the first prescription sunglasses I ever owned;

my mother knew I would need them in Arizona.

I think we have just been outside for Mom to photograph me in this outfit;

she shot three rolls of film, because, she said, "You will never be the same." 

Living

The fire in leaf and grass

so green it seems

each summer the last summer.

The wind blowing, the leaves

shivering in the sun,

each day the last day.

A red salamander

so cold and so

easy to catch, dreamily

moves his delicate feet

and long tail. I hold 

my hand open for him to go.

Each minute the last minute.

Denise Levertov  (1923-1997)

A Book of Luminous Things, edited by Czeslaw Milosz, 

Harcourt, 1996, page 24.

This is a wonderful anthology; I cannot recommend it too highly!