Poems

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Imaginary Conversation

Linda Pastan

1932 –

2023

You tell me to live each day
as if it were my last. This is in the kitchen
where before coffee I complain
of the day ahead—that obstacle race
of minutes and hours,
grocery stores and doctors.

But why the last? I ask. Why not
live each day as if it were the first—
all raw astonishment, Eve rubbing
her eyes awake that first morning,
the sun coming up
like an ingénue in the east?

You grind the coffee
with the small roar of a mind
trying to clear itself. I set
the table, glance out the window
where dew has baptized every
living surface.

The author of many collections of poetry, Linda Pastan’s book Carnival Evening: New and Selected Poems 1968–1998 was nominated for the National Book Award

Occasion

Themes

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More by this poet

Summer Triptych

1.
The world is water
to these bronzed boys
on their surfboards,
riding the sexual waves
of Maui
like so many fearless
cowboys, challenging
death on bucking
broncos of foam.

2.
On the beach at Santorini
we ate those tiny silverfish
grilled straight from the sea,
and when the sun went down
in the flaming west
there was applause
from all the sated diners,
as if it had done its acrobatic plunge
just for them.

Linda Pastan

2015

In the Happo-En Garden, Tokyo

The way a birthmark  
on a woman’s face defines 
rather than mars
her beauty, 

so the skyscrapers—
those flowers of technology— 
reveal the perfection 
of the garden they surround.        

Perhaps Eden is buried 
here in Japan,
where an incandescent 
koi slithers snakelike 

to the edge of the  pond; 
where a black-haired
Eve-san in the petalled
folds of a kimono 

once showed her silken body
to the sun, then picked a persimmon
and with a small bow
bit into it.

Linda Pastan

2014

Traveling Light

I’m only leaving you
for a handful of days,
but it feels as though
I’ll be gone forever—
the way the door closes

behind me with such solidity,
the way my suitcase
carries everything
I’d need for an eternity
of traveling light.

I’ve left my hotel number
on your desk, instructions
about the dog
and heating dinner. But
like the weather front

they warn is on its way
with its switchblades
of wind and ice,
our lives have minds
of their own.

Linda Pastan

2011

Poems

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Imaginary Conversation

More by this poet

Summer Triptych

In the Happo-En Garden, Tokyo

Traveling Light

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