The Poetry Reading

I’d have never thought my neighbor, Mr. Pate, would read poetry
What with his red truck and shotguns and the duck hunting 
But his aged voice quaked as he read Wordsworth and Burns
Shutting a volume at one point, continuing on from memory,
His eyes closed, as his voice rose

I only came to be there in his dusty living room, which smelled of mothballs and alcohol— 
His wife deceased but her memory honored in how neat he kept the place—
Because my mom asked me to stop by on my winter break, and I had enough sense of holiness, upon seeing his collection of poetry and prose, to ask about his favorite poem 
And when invited back, when work was through, how could I say no?

So it was at sunset that I came and we read, like scions of some lost age, wandering blind in digital Babylon
And I knew his words and the poems he chose were a summing up of what was still unsaid within himself 
As he poured himself a rum and coke and his voice broke
And I pursed my lips as we all must in the awkwardness of holiness  

While I did not take his hand, I placed one of my own on his shoulder 
As the night burned down the space between this world and the next
And we could almost smell the other side
On an evening when men, like warriors gathering the dead, 
Stood in the words of poets, looking to the skies, and cried
Before steeling ourselves, once again, for morning light