Company

poem ending with lines from Dave Bonta’s “Among the living“

Toward the end, it isn’t actually
the road we travel, but a hallway
reaching only from the bedroom
to the bath, and perhaps we will
require a companion for even this
small journey. Each step we take

becomes a victory. Some of us
brighten with delightful realization:
we are walking in the slippers
of our dearest dead: our fathers,
cousins, elders, heroines. We smile,
shuffle slowly, anticipate reunion.

They know we’re coming,
we’ve already written letters
to the dead and the mad.
They live all within
a door or two.