The Hearthkeeper

You turn into the alley after work and stop for a full twenty seconds, because a ginkgo is throwing its shadow slantwise across a white wall. Only back home do you notice the store you passed has shut for good and dinner is half a carton of eggs. So you make fried rice, scallion and soy sauce and yesterday's cold rice, and eating it you think that ginkgo shadow was really something today. You don't photograph it. You don't plan tomorrow's detour to catch it again. You hold it, and feel that this is enough. People mistake that for drifting. It's the opposite: you live the present at a finer resolution than the ones rushing past it. A dusk crescent hangs low in the west right after sundown, the thing that makes a tired person look up on the walk home. Procyon isn't the showiest star up there. It's just close, and plainly bright, and there the moment you lift your eyes.