Replay the Record

  Look forward to these things, and do that which will make

  Is it common to close your eyes

  and see future things? A guise

  of knowledge and knowing,

  but I have no power over the doing.

  I am not particularly unique

  or called to see the future and speak

  about it to others. But dying

  seems to change my role, crying

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  out to an older me to stop, or start,

  or not fear the beginnings of things, my heart

  prowling in my chest—I do not want to peer

  through the years like an ancient seer.

  And as I glance hesitantly forward,

  only borrowing God’s sight, hearing his word,

  I see the small and weak, but pulled like magnet

  to do good, rich, homegrown good, a righteous racket

  by the poor and young and struggling, bearing hope

  like blankets and warmth of hearth and home, a new scope

  into living, and living right. And the urge to jump,

  to follow them, begins to roar like the water as you bump

  against eddies and swirls before plunging back

  into the storm and fire of living, Earth hung in the black.

  Impossible things will happen, do happen. I have looked,

  and God’s goodness—our future—will hook us all.