one more scott cairns poem for the road

After the Last Kiss

By now I'm dead. Make what you will of that.

But granted you are alive, you will need

to be making some more as well. Prayers

have been made, for instance but (trust me)

the dead are oblivious to such late sessions.

Settle instead for food, common meals of thick soup.

Invite your friends. Make lively conversation

among steaming bowls, lifting heavy spoons.

If there is bread (there really must be bread),

tear it coarsely and hand each guest his share

for intinction in the soup. Something to say?

Say it now. Let the napkin fall and stay.

Kiss each guest when it comes to time for parting.

They may be embarrassed, caught without wit

or custom. (See them shifting from foot to

foot at the open door?) Could be you will

repeat your farewells a time or two more

than seems fit. But had you not embraced them

at such common departures, your prayers will

fall as dry crumbs, nor will they comfort you.

Cairns, Scott. "After the Last Kiss" philokalia: new & selected poems. Lincoln, Nebraska: Zoo Press, 2002.