Going to Church for the Last Time

What is it, after all, that I thought

to recognize?

Over and over again we are told

and then discover

that when you go back it is all

smaller.  But each time there appears

to have been a mistake.  There is nothing

to measure by and who-

ever might know is not there…’

I suppose I had expected the shrinking to—

what?

Stop?

                                    W. S. Merwin

                                    “The Skyline”

                                    Unframed Originals

There’s that, yes, how small things seem

when we come back.  Rooms of our old

houses, widths of pews, the unrelenting

hardness of the padded kneelers. 

It’s not where I usually sat anyway—

usually it was at the back and to the right

and the two older people made room

for me and it was never small.  And late

Saturday afternoons meant the huge stained

glass windows over the altar almost

breathed, the heart in the center of it all

expanding, shrinking, expanding, shrinking,

right there above the host.  But maybe urns

shrink everything, even if they are made large

by drapes and live-flowered rosaries, dozens

of white carnations lovely and belonging

and that same quality light slanted and broke

across everything.  I’ve forgotten just now

who I was sitting next to, my grandmother

I think, and she wasn’t Catholic but she did it

the way we all did, rose and fell and kneeled

and sang and waited to leave, and because

we were family we were the first ones

to the vestibule, and everyone followed us—

but I wanted, like some pose for a painter,

to wait at the foot of it all because once

you were gone, really gone, and all those broken

through roots the back-hoe snapped were

shoveled on top of your small box, the world

would shrink back, the elastic of it

exhausted.  It’s awkward and sentimental

but no less the truth to say that certain light

on that winter afternoon followed me home

and up that little hill.  Or I had wanted it

to.  I wanted to follow the man who carried

you and I wanted to pull the light out

of that glass heart and throw it up in the air

like seeds at a wedding.  Like dandelion fuzz.

Like any small, small thing clutched and held

while we walk away and don’t look back.