Clay didn’t see it coming:
a blinding light filled every crack of air.
He was struck down before he fathered children:
I pitied him for that extremity.
Clay’s bookshelves slipped and folded in like rivers
His eyes looked past the world and into God.
At the shore’s end,
the boat stopped,
and the sky filled with rain and constellations.
Clay’s clothes were wet.
The rain came from too high to find its source.
Clay released the tiller,
and the boat began to sing
in a language Clay did not understand.
The deck yielded to peonies.
Drowning men streamed out of the water:
the Lord was speaking,
and it was the falling rain.
A dove and a raven nested in Clay’s eyes.
Beneath his feet, the boat
disintegrated at the last. There was no returning.
Edited:
The air was dancing
above the turning Earth.
