Some stray thought triggers a memory of
an early morning long ago. Is it
August or September? Dew-wet
grass between my barefoot
Toes. Delicious. Apples ripen
on the tree as I peg out washing
on the line. Wendy asleep upstairs,
softly snoring through the dawn
chorus after another interrupted night.

Later that day, clipping the pittosporum
to a perfect sphere—and her approving
thumbs-up from the bedroom window.
She's alive! But later still,
the pittosporum dies in a bitter
frost, so now both sides of that
equation sum to by zero.

Today is the summer solstice. Another
pivotal moment, when the world turns
to follow the pittosporum and her
into memory. For now begins the
imperceptible slide into the vast
encroaching darkness of winter.
There's a symmetry to this now
that echoes what was then: an instant
of maximum light that could not exist
without the surrounding dark.

Can you feel it? Can you catch it?—
this infinitesimal point poised between brilliance
and the all-embracing dark, this moment where
we find the space to live?