Uncle Emmet, Wiser Than God

(reprinted by permission of Graywolf Press)

The most nearly spherical

And therefore perfect

Of seven brothers

And his beautiful, butcher-wife

Mary, brought forth

No children unto this land,

Which now is water.

They seemed to know

The dam would come

And all return to darkness,

That God would rest from then on

And say of Friendship, Texas,

I did what I could do.

Emmet laughed as they walked

Into their fields, as the water

Rose to their heads,

As Mary nuzzled his stone-smelling neck,

And he said of Friendship, Texas,

It never had a chance,

Which they'd known

Since tasting the wheat

In the body of Christ,

Since Mary first spilt open a rabbit

And touched her fingers to her tongue—

So decided not to fight their destiny,

The dam's brown water of forgetting,

But rather to take it in,

To swell and dissolve like seeds,

To wander into the heart

Of that more perfect solitude:

And so, hand in hand, and slow, they did.