the New Pantagruel

Three Poems

by Gary Smith

Contents

• Prophecy
• The Road to Emmaus
• The Dream of Uncle Cleo

Prophecy

You’ll be coming off three days on the night shift
when you realize there was no sugar
in the bottom of the cup, no bottom
of the cup for that matter. Sometime
after your last 12-step meeting
you’ll know you’ll always walk wounded,
limp home. Those wounds in your hands
won’t heal; they’ll be a sign to all,
especially you. You’ll walk around clean,
feeling the hole in your own side,
wondering if this was the glorious
resurrection promised.

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The Road to Emmaus

For this reason the gospel was preached also to those who are dead, that they might be judged according to men in the flesh, but live according to God in the spirit. –1 Peter 4:6 NKJV

I walked a long road for this home-going:
tangled paths of memory. You both assumed
it was a trick. You were expecting flowing
wounds, blood-torn back – I looked as if hewn
from a rock, not a grave that thought it had me.
Peter, you were right, but didn’t see:
everyone had the same eyes. To be
drowning, or to have your soul (demanded
from birth, the owed death waiting) returned –
all one, all the same. Peter, everyone dies,
but not all live. Some choose to burn
in prison, waiting to be freed. Why
judge the damned until you walk the sea?
Even the death of you will live in Me.

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The Dream of Uncle Cleo*

In my dream, Uncle Cleo stands in his dead brother’s home
and calls suddenly for prayer. “When we die, let us die quickly,
oh Lord, but let us be what we can in the meantime.”
My brother loudly says “amen,” and adds
“I’m having trouble with that ‘be what we can,’ myself.”
Uncle Cleo keeps on in that calm preacher’s voice of his
about our trip, says “there’s no use to leave before daylight.”

In reality, Uncle Cleo died old of diabetes and drink,
a few body parts at a time until his final day at a VA hospital.
I never heard him pray, but he really had that preacher’s voice.
He knew what it was to ‘be what he could,’ having been a sailor,
a shoe salesman, a drinker. He knew what it was to find himself
married on a drunken weekend. His brother didn’t live like this.
The drunken marriage didn’t last the weekend, but there was
another woman who stayed with him through many divorces,
including their own.

Uncle Cleo really did live to stand in his dead brother’s home.
His brother always said he wanted to be a preacher
but died broke selling furniture instead; heart failure one
hot afternoon. If my brother ever says “I’m having trouble
with that ‘be what we can,’ myself,” I’ll probably say “amen” out loud,
but I doubt he’ll ever say it to me.

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