Trip Home
"From dying suddenly and unprepared, Good Lord deliver us."
                                                   -Book of Common Prayer

On the Metroliner, in the tunnel,
first the lights go out, then 
the kind of boom that follows fireworks — 
the thud a bomb might make 
detonating in the sea.
The train jerks and stops. 

This is it, I think, imagining the pop 
of rupturing like an eardrum. 
I make a fist of guts, steel myself 
for pain, blinded eyes, stopped wits.

The death I’ve planned, laid up 
like a jar of peach preserves,
comes late in life, in bed, my dogs 
at hand.  The piano’s tuned, the basement 
finally waterproofed and clean. I grieve, 
but reach for God and face the music, 
which is Brahms.

The lights come on. 
The conductor’s voice is staticky. 
The car, its cargo quiet, lurches 
into gear, ambles towards 
the light of day. The voice explains 
the brief delay. People talk again 
of baseball games and movie stars.

At home, the dogs paddle through the grass 
to greet me. In the corner of my eye, 
the River Styx slides by.





Ephemera


With the dog hair, 
dust and crumbs 
littering the kitchen floor, 
I sweep up a lightning bug — 
the one I saw an hour ago,
circling the space around 
the table, blinking on and off. 
“Poor thing,” I say to no one. 
I think of capture and release, 
but do no more than watch.

Even outdoors, life is brief 
for these iconic fireflies, 
harmless harbingers of summer. 
Our own lights and flutterings
are also pitiable things.