Wiman says
"I do not know how to come closer to God
except by standing where a world is ending
for one man," and I've played this game before
Stripped copper pipes from sacred vows
Stood over the poem driven mad
by the interminable urge
to take what I love and lead it by the hand
into a realm of uninterrupted life
And every time I have tried to broker
new rules: If, the bargaining begins,
it must be for all of us
the way Wiman says, then let me be
a world ending and not its witness
Or let me stand with the man for whom
the world's ending and both watch it
wing below the horizon with no more
self-consciousness than a sunset
Or else let closeness to God
be achieveable by some un-agonizing means
which the poet is forgetting in his neglect
or in his haste failing to see
Let it be like a man whose life
starts and ends each day as his wife
wakes in darkness
to braid the long hair he loves
Who falls asleep each night
with it blanketing them both
Let the sea change find me
like her mystery transforms him
Let me sleep safely draped in it
Let dawn ring through her roots
like stars riveted the paolo verdes
beneath which I met Esta
and across a gulf of fifty years
we held widowed hands
wondered aloud who among
the people we loved
would be taken from us next
and agreed we would
keep going to them unguarded
So while we're at it
you might as well let the words
of my mouth and the meditations
of my heart merge
into some shared territory
align in my embattled face
and arrive each time heralding
a gate pearly and packed
like a train platform
announced too far in advance
the anticipatory crowd rushing
beneath a flock of letters
slapping FEAR NOT
instead of a time
into our departing hears
I remember those same words
embroidered backwards on a cap
coming in from tag by the town hall
Let me veer back to that day
Esta was setting the table for all
her still living children
and my brother wore
his NO FEAR hat and we lived
with our mom and dad
The house was heaven to me
None of us had begun to be
inscrutably and irresistibly
called away from this world 1
I told Esta if it was only the four of us
gathered around the table for all time
It would not be hard for me
to love that life
If I get given back to anyone
let it be them
If the world ends for each of us
and gives each of us
a thousand chances at this life
I'd say let it be this every time
1. Jay Imbrenda
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Lily Herman is a writer, editor, and bruiser. She co-edits the journal NAVIGATIONS with Caroline Preziosi, is working on the second draft of a romance novel, and more of her work can be found at lilyjherman.com.