[John Riley]

The Last Step

I shouldn’t have come to this meeting where people
are complaining about their lives before whispering
they’re grateful, the force of the lie dropping
their eyes to the old church’s floor, where beneath
the waxed pine there is a cellar full of things
unseen and unsaid— cracked vases
that once held wilted Easter flowers,
children’s lost shoes and hats and the still-alive
searching fish waiting to be lifted by a net
and taken to the narrow river running below
the cellar floor, to swim away and search
for the promised peace, escape the arrangements
of earthly things sitting in stacked boxes
leaning between old lamps with gold tasseled shades,
cracked violins, rusted music stands, closed books,
all gathered under a too-blue sky painted on the cellar’s
ceiling, a sky with no stars to triangulate.