Replay the Record

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

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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.