Closing, and: Clara’s Vision

Closing

Two rooms away the workman screws down cement board, shores up the porch’s sagging floor.

He has the radio on.

Next to me, the old cat lies prone, hind legs paralyzed,

speaking his last.

All I can say in return is

Yes, Yes.

The radio drones on, all talk.

I can’t discern words, just sounds, the cadence of speech familiar,

but broken.

The old cat’s words are not cries, but statements.

Blessed are those graced with the gift of tongues.

Yes. Yes.

Clara’s Vision

(Appalachian Trail)

We drove for hours across terrain I couldn’t recognize; through small towns with landscapes that read: church, church, feed store, church, past ramshackle houses that looked as if they’d been pulled from antique photographs: shoeless children running through yards, old-looking young women working stern-faced on front porches. We arrived near sunset, when the light was gently capping each ridge, cutting the edges of rocks in red, pink, gray. I didn’t know what heaven was, but perhaps this was it: clouds sweeping gravel paths; granite disappearing, then reappearing, in the mist; small peaks poking out of miniature white mountains within mountains. The air was thin. I thought I might faint. You pointed along the serpentine curve of the path and told me it went all the way up to Canada. How far was that? How many lifetimes would it take to traverse that distance? Since I’d met you, I’d only wondered, more and more, how one can come to be saved, I mean truly saved, not the down-on-your-knees, begging to be forgiven saved, but the kind where we each come to know ourselves —radiance and repulsion aside— just simply to know ourselves. I thought you’d found that and I wanted it too. As the sun set, the path began to fade into an impenetrable darkness. You said we’d hike the trail one day and I believed you. Then, back to the truck for the long ride home. I didn’t know then what heaven was, but I wanted to believe you did.