It started at my office, moving
into the closet to get my coat, a hint
of an image of me a few minutes
and several blocks away, slanting toward the
asphalt and curb and slanting toward God,
dying in a moment, in the steel-snapping cold
of the later evening walk home.

I stopped for a moment, with
the Dante hangover of fear and regret
that I did not know God at this moment
of death, moved to a moment
of self-conscious prayer.

Coat and hat and scarf and gloves later,
after stopping for milk at the corner store,
approaching my home street, God
came to me again, or the little dream
of God and my death and the new dream
showed me something in my drop to the brick, that
God kills for a laugh, in kindness
and for the company of laughter,
like a blessing even better
than the cloying Abraham’s embrace.

And then, in a step or two away
around the corner,
God’s joke took the turn, and rising,
rising in my chest, my throat,
the rest of God’s fine humor came.
The joke glimpsed,
and savored, and blessed, and lost, to live.