October 2016
William Greenway
whgreenway@ysu.edu
whgreenway@ysu.edu
My collection, William Greenway’s Selected Poems is from FutureCycle Press. Both my tenth and eleventh collections won Ohio Poetry Book of the Year Awards. I have published in Poetry, American Poetry Review, Georgia Review, Southern Review, Poetry Northwest, Shenandoah, and Prairie Schooner. I'm Distinguished Professor of English at Youngstown State University.
The Welcoming
When Matt, my cousin like a brother,
died in a head-on some thirty years ago,
I wanted to ask my long-dead preacher father,
Why? another one of those questions
I used to bug him with, getting answers
that made no sense to me, about Heaven
and Eternity:
What do you do?
Glorify God.
For how long?
Forever.
How long is that?
Forever.
Pint-sized Inquisitor,
I persisted (permission
to badger the witness?),
will we be ourselves, and, if so,
how old will we be?
I forgot what he said,
but it was my sister Sherry
who finally gave me the answer
I wanted, when, in hospice,
with her last breath,
she closed her eyes
and smiled
as if she’d just met Glory
and Forever
head on,
and called them what
we called him as a child:
Matthew.
©2016 William Greenway
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