In the town where I work, the summer folks haven’t yet returned. By chance, on a rural road around the lake, I meet a builder. “Hey!” he calls to me, and I can hear the surprise in his voice. You’re alive? I am, indeed, yes.

Around us, a sugar snow melts. Sunlight falls through the trees that are a month out, at least, from this year’s first nubs of leaves. Behind him, the silent snow-covered lake. We kick around, as Vermonters do, what it’s like to live in our Green Mountain state right now, how hot passions run, how immediately aid is given to a neighbor in need. What it’s like to live in the crumbling of the American Empire, a madman at the helm. In a copse of cedars, blackbirds chorus.

Precisely one year ago, I could not walk outside my house alone. Ravaged by cancer and chemo and hunger, I was so weak I trembled, on the verge of falling. A rattle of bones, scraps of flesh.

On this clearing day, on my way home, I stop by the co-op and buy two pears. I lay these on the seat of my car and dart across Main Street to the post office. Without realizing it, I’m running. As I leap onto the sidewalk, I marvel at the pleasure of movement, the sun in my short hair, my cheeks wind-burnt from a recent long walk along a muddy backroad. I took the time to stand before a tree of chittering goldfinches.

All this week I’ve been reading Robert Frost, perhaps my mother’s favorite poet. A poet who wrote of stone walls and apple picking and the ineffable darkness of human life. But here’s a poem to celebrate today, this day, no matter where or who you are, by Ray Carver who knew the great symphony of life, too.

Gravy

No other word will do. For that’s what it was. Gravy.
Gravy these past ten years.
Alive, sober, working, loving and
being loved by a good woman. Eleven years
ago he was told he had six months to live
at the rate he was going. And he was going
nowhere but down. So he changed his ways
somehow. He quit drinking! And the rest?
After that it was all gravy, every minute
of it, up to and including when he was told about,
well, some things that were breaking down and
building up inside his head. “Don’t weep for me,”
he said to his friends. “I’m a lucky man.
I’ve had ten years longer than I or anyone
expected. Pure gravy. And don’t forget it.”