Labor day

Driving the short distance to where I took my morning walk on Labor Day

I recall thinking how beautiful and quiet this normally busy is.

I remembered times when Fernanda and I have vacationed

in some small northern California town

and I had gone somewhere to write in the early morning
while she sleeping in the hotel room bed.

There is often a stillness in those places and times
that I find remarkable
and lonely.

Probably due in some part to the lack of visible cars and people
I thought, on that holiday morning

that perhaps there had been a declaration of war

or news of a bomb or impending catastrophe.

I had the sense that I would be perfectly at peace if I were to die 

perhaps not at that very moment

but on that day
would be alright

and imagined that I could probably not ask for much more

in death

than to feel so ease at ease as my life ended.