Maybe like my drunk buddy
trying to ice fish
on a farm pond
in Oklahoma
suddenly ankle deep in cold cow water.

Or like my own small son
staggering across the living room rug
toward his mother.

But maybe like my father,
lifted light
as a bag of popcorn
in my arms,
slipper feet brushing
the floor between the hospice bed
& wheel chair,
voice swallowed in the unmoving ocean
of morphine,
the pupils of his eyes
two little boats
bobbing
somewhere far out
on that motionless sea.

—Benjamin Myers

Copyright © 2014 by the author or Christianity Today/Books & Culture magazine.
Click here for reprint information on Books & Culture.