"Each of us leaves an unfinished life," says poet Mary Oliver.

It is possible not to? Is it possible to live so fully, so richly, so completely that you exit exhaling, "That's it, then, once this mug goes back in the cabinet" or "once I give the dog this last scratch behind the ears" or "once I kiss my beloved one final time"?

[Pause.]

Not that we don't leave good lives when we go, lives of mercy and patency. Just that there's always one more possibility waiting in the next room, around this minute's corner, beyond this paragraph's ellipses…

Text and image © 2010 by Dirk deVries. All rights reserved.