To Charon
by Graham Hillard
The nature of faith never concerned you,
only the correct coins holding shut
the eyes of the dead, bribe enough
for a one-way trip across the calm, deep river
of your passage. Rarely did your thoughts
go to the friends left behind, loved ones
counting out the two pennies that might
have fetched a month's bread or made the winter
that much easier. Nor to the dead
from whose eyes you peeled the small tokens
of silver and copper, waking men
to a future they'd never really expected.
Your thoughts were on your fare, but theirs were alive
with the shock of myth come true, a faith
that had been weak without their knowing it.
What will you say to me
when the world falls from my eyes,
when I emerge, drenched and shaking, from the river,
on my knees in the red earth of the bank,
surprised by the God I never doubted?
Graham Hillard lives and teaches in Nashville, Tennessee. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in numerous journals, including The Oxford American, Tar River Poetry, Puerto del Sol, and The Portland Review.