Today Will Be Today

Today will be like no other

day in the history of humankind,

perhaps in the dusty annals of the expanding universe.

Today the oak tree in my front yard

will sway differently in the winter wind,

not like it did yesterday or last month.

Today will be its own unique dance.

My wife will be her self

in a way that neither she nor I have known before,

not really the same person I

began to love sixty years ago,

not even the same person I embraced sixty minutes ago.

Maggie, our black Lab, will scratch her floppy right ear

like she does many times everyday

but not like she has ever done before.

Not the same.  Not today.

Voices drifting from the neighbor's yard,

a bird's song rising,

slate gray clouds hanging low 

in the December sky,

my heart's rhythmical throb,

the train whistle calling me 

from miles away,

even the silence that nourishes my soul,

nothing will be the same as ever before.

What was was.

What will be will be.

Today will be today.