Linda Pastan's "Imaginary Conversation"

Thoughts on time.

Imaginary Conversation

You tell me to live each day
as if it were my last. This is in the kitchen
where before coffee I complain
of the day ahead—that obstacle race
of minutes and hours,
grocery stores and doctors.

But why the last? I ask. Why not
live each day as if it were the first—
all raw astonishment, Eve rubbing
her eyes awake that first morning,
the sun coming up
like an ingénue in the east?

You grind the coffee
with the small roar of a mind
trying to clear itself. I set
the table, glance out the window
where dew has baptized every
living surface.


from Insomnia (W.W. Norton, 2015)

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I love when a poem does something like this:

But why the last? I ask.

I love when a poem says but why? Or when a poem says why not? Or when a poem says if or only if or could or have you ever or do you ever or ever wonder if?

I love when a poem says something different about the way we view the world. I think Linda Pastan’s poems do this. There’s a poem of hers, “Why Are Your Poems So Dark?,” that reads, in full:

Isn't the moon dark too,
most of the time?

And doesn't the white page
seem unfinished

without the dark stain
of alphabets?

When God demanded light,
he didn't banish darkness.

Instead he invented
ebony and crows

and that small mole
on your left cheekbone.

Or did you mean to ask
"Why are you sad so often?"

Ask the moon.
Ask what it has witnessed.

I love that. I love that it begins isn’t the moon dark too, as if to say — have you ever really thought about what you’re asking?

And so, when Linda Pastan writes, in today’s poem, but why the last, it is the kind of question I adore, a question that does not assume it knows what we are supposedly supposed to know, a question that mirthfully pushes back against the world, and wonders aloud about astonishment in the face of certainty.

I’m struck that I haven’t written about Pastan’s work before — mostly because it feels like the kind of reminder I both need and am drawn to. It’s now mid-March, a month of attrition and uncertainty, these feelings that I tend to notice especially as a teacher. It’s a month where winter’s cold still lingers and spring feels not quite here, and the weather moves between high-highs and low-lows and everything seems too far away, and not close enough yet. And what is close is often difficult.

In this moment, grace, I think, takes a backseat to the certainty of judgment and the toll that stress takes on us. And so, Pastan’s poem reminds me of the way that even the seemingly smallest question can recalibrate a mind back toward wonder. But why the last? It’s a good question. It throws itself right into a time-tried cliche and then says: why?

And truthfully…why? Why live as if each day is our last? If we live in such a way, we live, perhaps, with a finitude that cuts us off from the pleasure of surprise. If we live as if each day is our first, then we live entirely surprised, the sun an “ingénue” — all of us wide-eyed, looking back at it. I might choose the latter.

I am reminded, in this moment, of a poem by Tess Taylor — from her collection Work & Days — that reads:

Housman was right:

your life is short.
To miss even this springtime
would be an error.

I’m thinking of cliches. Blink and you might miss it. Life is short. Live each day as if it’s your last.

When I consider what’s at the heart of Pastan’s poem today, I consider how such cliches might not always serve the aim they intend to serve. To live each day as if it is your last is to center your own disappearance at the heart of your living, and to make choices, constantly, based on your past experience. It is to say, with every decision, “is this good enough for me to engage with as the final thing I do?” A worthy sentiment, I think, but one that then treats everything one chooses against as expendable, unworthy of the moment, as if each moment is entirely individualistic, and entirely your own. It recalibrates the present tense as a place where you — and only you — live, surrounded by others who have recalibrated the moment around their own finitude, too. All of us, in bubbles, about to pop.

This is all well and good, and probably far more harmless than I am making it seem. In fact, I think it is humbling to remind oneself of one’s own fragility. And yet, such a cliche — to live each day as if it is your last — neglects and forgets a future. Not just for you, or for me, but for all of us. It is a cliche rooted in an entirely present moment, where nothing is possible because nothing more will ever happen. Every day is one’s last. There is no tomorrow. The future does not exist. And though the present is where we live, the future is what we need in order to build our capacity for hope. And I don’t mean some far off future. I mean, quite literally, the next minute, the next hour. I mean tomorrow.

To live each day as if it is our first is to acknowledge tomorrow. It is to acknowledge the next second. It is to say that it’s alright to dawdle, to linger, to wait. It’s to remember that we don’t always know everything for certain, and certainly not yet. And it’s to remember that people live amidst our lives, and after our lives, too. Sometimes we forget that. I know I do. And so, when Tess Taylor writes to miss even this springtime would be an error, I think of that word: springtime. A long moment. A moment of blooming. We don’t live in seconds that need to be analyzed and actualized for maximum benefit. We live in time.

One beautiful thing about poems is that they help me remember this. Perhaps nothing illustrates this best than Linda Pastan’s poem “Counting Backwards,” where, in meditating on aging, Pastan writes:

But the numbers
hardly matter.
It’s the physics
of acceleration I mind,
the way time speeds up
as if it hasn’t guessed

the destination—
where look!
I see my mother
and father bearing a cake,
waiting for me
at the starting line.

Look at that! Death has become the starting line, and everything has become reversed. How beautiful. I can’t believe I ever thought I knew anything, when so much of life could be made strange and new to me.

In an interview with The Paris Review, Linda Pastan said — about how she has found herself writing, so often, about some of the same things — the following:

I do know that my subject matter has changed—no more delivery rooms for me, no more children leaving home—even my grandchildren are grown by now. But I think my poems have been consistent over the years in terms of their interest in metaphor, in the changing of the seasons, in Eden, in the dangers lurking beneath the surfaces of everyday life, in Death just waiting.

And it’s funny, in 1984, just over thirty years before Linda Pastan wrote today’s poem, she wrote a poem titled “Waiting Room.” In that poem, she wrote:

And I thought
we practice
all our lives
waiting
on supermarket lines
burdened by produce,
by telephones
whose mute refusals
make silence
absolute

Beautiful, I think. And quite lovely, I think, that we have access to this same poet writing, across the decades, about grocery shopping and time and so much else, these obsessions of ordinary, human life.

And I think that such things — this meditation on waiting in 1984, and this meditation on astonishment in 2015 — make me remember that some things do not leave us, no matter how hard we try. Even now, in 2025, in a year when going to the grocery store is tinged with the strange, absurd sorrow of dodging people who make their livelihood shopping for others, and thus shop — as I would, if I were in such a situation — with an urgency that destabilizes each aisle, yes, even now, we still have the question of what to do with our time. We always will. And it’s not just the question of what to do with our time, but also the question of how we think about it. Do we consider time as something that must be filled? Do we consider it as something that must be used? Do we consider it as something that is going away? Do we consider it as something that is being given to us? Do we consider it as something that is counting down? Do we consider it as something that is counting up? Do we consider it at all? Do we ever forget about it? And are we ever reminded of it, with a sharpness one might equate to pain? Does time make us sad? Does it make us grateful? Perhaps both at once? Perhaps, some days, trying to fall asleep, it makes you afraid. Don’t worry. Or do. That happens to me, too.

And so, I return to Pastan’s idea about what happens if we live each day as if it were our first. Though seizing the day feels like it centers a kind of action that might feel necessary, it also centers a kind of taking. The day becomes a thing you pick apart, grabbing what suits you. You fill the blank spaces of time, trying to make it yours. Living each day as if it is your first means admitting, daily, that something will almost certainly be new to you. That you will encounter something beautiful, or ugly, or wonderful, or astonishing, or horrifying. And that you will remember it tomorrow, and then, tomorrow, will encounter something new. Uncertain, ordinary, learning things we are. I wish we centered that more often than the idea that we could become masters of this thing we call time, which will — certainly, yes — age us, wisen us, fool us, surprise us, guide us, birth us, and end us.

In his book Shattered, Hanif Kureishi writes:

Many of us expect one day to be acknowledged for our exceptional qualities, but Kafka points out that we may be noticed only for our ordinariness.

Living each day as if it is your last is exceptional, I think. Living each day as if it is your first is ordinary. Sometimes, I think, our pursuit of the former has caused us to neglect the billion ordinary lives of this world that are trying, each day, to do what we are all trying to do: live. All of this matters, I think, because we all live in time. And how we live in time — what we do with it, how we try to control it, and the consequences of trying to control it — affect all who live in time, which is to say all of us. Violence, for example, destroys other people’s sense of time. It ruins entire tomorrows. When I think of a life as something that is being born each day, then I think of the ending of such a life as the ending of a thousand tomorrows. Which is to say a thousand births. Which is to say: life holds the privilege of thinking about tomorrow. Which is to say: hold on to hope. Which is to say: hold on to others, too. Which is to say: that is a lot of hope, combined.

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Some notes:

1. I said this last week, but it deserves to be said again, especially in the wake of institutions such as Columbia conceding far too much to a ruthless and vindictive federal government: I appreciated NYC mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani’s courage and conviction in standing up to ICE’s “border czar” Tom Homan after Khalil’s arrest. You can find video of the encounter circulating online, and you can find more info about Mamdani’s campaign here.

2. Here is a website — put together by volunteers — that tracks the jobs lost and lives affected by the de-funding of USAID. It’s worth reading in order to fully understand the severity of what is happening, who it is affecting, and how to help.

3. You can find a list of the work that Writers Against the War on Gaza is doing to build solidarity among writers in support of Palestinian and against their consistent oppression here.

4. Workshops 4 Gaza is an organization of writers putting together donation-based writing workshops and readings in support of Palestine and in awareness of a more just, informed, thoughtful, considerate world. You can follow them here and get more information about them here.

5. If you’ve read any of the recent newsletters, you’ve perhaps noticed that I am offering a subscription option. This is functioning as a kind of “tip jar.” If you would like to offer your monetary support as a form of generosity, please consider becoming a paid subscriber below. There is no difference in what you receive as a free or paid subscriber; to choose the latter is simply an option to exercise your generosity if you feel willing. I am grateful for you either way. Thanks for your readership.