Beyond

A poem after the death of my pastor

Your best suit from when you were vivid
is now draped over closed bellows.
You are absent from the body.

As my grasp on you shrivels,
the only way to bear your stillness
is to loose my eyes from this world’s penny treats

And see how even Sunday best, lily, golden ribbon—
all in deferential display—turn poor
beneath the beams I now begin to glean:

A procession meets you—the Correction,
the Final Filling, the Joyous Thunder,
so near that the windows tremble in their frames.

Present with the Lord, you wear the gain—
the final Making Right of all things, beyond
this substance with which I have to do for now.

Woe to this roadside attraction—pretender:
Shabby, sad, sorry jewels, chrome wheels, and hankies—
as if all this stuff were fitting for the wedding feast.

Painting by Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis, from “Funeral Symphony,” 1903