Before
By Ron Rash
Before clock hands showed the time
time ceased, and looking glasses
were veiled as if they still held
familiar faces, in those
last moments when breath shallowed
like a wellspring running dry,
God-words quickened, only then
the dying left death-beds borne
on the arms of the gathered,
lowered to the floor so they
might press close, as though a door
through which to listen and know
the earth's old secrets before
it opened, and they entered.
Ron Rash, "Before" from Poems (New and Selected). Copyright © 2016 by Ron Rash. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers Inc.
