Donal Mahoney- A Poem

Apostrophe in Eternity

A coffin’s not so bad, the old monk told me,

the two of us standing there, a foot or two 

from the monk who had died the day before

and was lying now in a pine casket.

He was younger, only 83, the old monk said, 

and healthy, too, and yet he got there 

before I did, a lucky soul if you believe 

that life's an apostrophe in eternity 

standing in momentarily

for Who we’re all dying to meet.

If we didn’t believe that, the old monk said,

neither of us would have come here.

He was an engineer, like you, for years 

and I would have been a forest ranger, 

hard to believe two men like us would 

spend our lives praying for hours a day 

and making cheddar cheese in between. 

I’ll give you some to take home to the family.

The cheese is worth the trip, he laughed. 

We monks make the best of it

until the apostrophe disappears.

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Donal Mahoney lives in St. Louis, Missouri.