Three daughters left, and the storm came. As if on cue, as if to say, slow down and reflect on all that is good. So you sat on the porch, rain drifting over the sound, and like a photograph dropped into developing solution, the past few days came into focus.

Sketches mostly, brief chiaroscuro bursts, remembrances you hope your mind will never let go. Of Wasque Beach, of drifting out with the tide to the sea, sunlight slicing the water into paper cuts of blue and white, lolling in the shallows of the sandbar — talking, laughing. Of a late dinner on white plates in white chairs at a white table under a blue bead board ceiling, grilled bluefish and fried okra, sand under bare feet. Of an evening lecture at the Chilmark Community Center, tanned bodies in folding seats, windows open to a cricket chorus. Of huddling on the wicker settee together, watching a movie on a computer with a screen far too small, empty ice cream bowls on the floor.

Then back to the present. The rain now pelting the shingled roof, the water beyond the brambles no longer blue. Slate green until it meets the sky at the horizon, and there a ghostly gray, such that it’s hard to tell where the curve of the world ends and the sky begins. Sailboats moored in the near distance, lanyards clanking against masts, steel shrouds listing in the wind. A red biplane with a rubber band engine chugs unseen across the sky. Just after noon, you crawl back into the bed, electricity now lost. The sheets are moist with humidity, the light soft and palpable, through windows long since etched with the wind of Island winters. The breeze is alive too, rattling windows, kicking up as if in a hurry to get somewhere, then just as suddenly dying to stillness. Pine boughs rock against the soft light. Somewhere the call of a crow rises against the wind.

You open your book. The only sound is the intermittent finger turning a page. You try to focus, but eight or ten pages in, you lose the battle. The breeze brushes lightly against your neck. As you drift away, you’re sure that you had something you wanted to remember, something that seemed too important to let go. The world has shifted to analog time. The moon rises and falls, the seasons change, the earth spins in its impeccable orbit. What was it you wanted to remember? It hardly matters, your mind says. This, old man, is the perfect, perfect day.

— Jim Bradberry