What will be enough?
To squeeze an orange,
scrape its rind,
breathe in the pungency?
Or simply to spread the butter
with a fat, ornate knife?
And do you imagine you
will be satisfied in heaven
with trumpets
and the fantastical vision
that must slowly absorb you,
you who still feel you have never yet
been even here,
who spend your mornings
in this early cold
listening to a dripping faucet,
waiting.
John Richards is a employment and trial lawyer practicing in Texas but living in St. Louis. He came to poetry late in life through an unexpected turn in his psychoanalysis and then studied at the Writer’s Garret in Dallas under Jack Myers, Brian Clements and Joe Ahearn.
Thanks — I needed that!