After You Went and Died
After You Went and Died
Joshua Hren
I fell for you who filled with stones
Your bright blue, well-worn shoes.
You stepped into the six foot stream
And let the waters kill
The questions that had kept you quaked,
Awake at sunrise still.
I felt for you at first, then crooked
My neck when you complained.
I handed you a tissue (used),
A pocket full of pills
Prescribed to me when I was you—
When I had lost my will.
I wear your blues now, walk our park,
And listen on the bench—
Eyes wet and wide, I nod through cricks—
When perfect strangers cry.
They say the same things you had said
Before you went and died.
Joshua Hren
Poet & Publisher
Joshua is founder of Wiseblood Books and co-founder of the MFA at the University of St. Thomas. He regularly publishes essays and poems in such journals as First Things and America, National Review and Commonweal, Public Discourse and LOGOS, Evangelization & Culture and The Lamp. Joshua’s books include: the novel Infinite Regress; the short story collections This Our Exile and In the Wine Press; the book of poems Last Things, First Things, & Other Lost Causes; Middle-earth and the Return of the Common Good: J.R.R. Tolkien and Political Philosophy; How to Read (and Write) Like a Catholic; and Contemplative Realism: A Theological-Aesthetical Manifesto.
Photography by Ryunosuke Kikuno