At the long tables of time
God’s jars are boozing.
—Paul Celan
Discussing death is not high on our list,
not after a year of not talking at all,
but we do, between bites of bagel
commemorating Josh and Jerry and John,
buddies dead from cancer, and other
assorted persons of our mutual acquaintance,
dead from heart disease and old age.
Really, we mention them only in passing,
and by the last bite of our bagels
move on to politics and war, the economy,
recalcitrant students and teachers central
to our respective careers, then stuff them,
along with all our topics, into God’s jars,
mixing talk of mortality with hope and loss
with joy and any other high-proof, dark
sordidness with faith, and after two hours
take our leave of each other, contented at
having partaken of the long tables of time,
its banquet of bitter sweet, its spare bouquet.
George Drew is the author of The View from Jackass Hill, 2010 winner of the X. J. Kennedy Poetry Prize, Texas Review Press, which also has just published his chapbook, Down & Dirty (2015), and will publish his New & Selected, Pastoral Habits, in Jan/ Feb 2016. His sixth collection, Fancy’s Orphan, is due out in January 2017, from Tiger Bark Press. He is the winner of the 2014 St. Petersburg Review poetry contest. Originally from Mississippi, he lives in upstate New York.
