No Hurry – a poem by Garret Keizer

No Hurry


Someday we may reach a level of love
so high it will seem foolish to compose
a poem, impossible even to whisper of
the meaning behind the obsolescent rose.
We aren’t there yet, of course, but only skim
the meadow tops until we roost in church,
not gone to heaven but crying our hymn
skyward from our consummated perch.
I’m in no hurry for transcendence, dear.
An astral body scares me, no matter how
sublime, how infinite, emancipating, and clear
the unstrained light; I want the stained light now. 
Enough for me to glimpse us heading to
an us beyond ourselves, yet still with you. 

Garret Keizer is the author of The World Pushes Back, winner of the 2018 X. J. Kennedy Poetry Prize, and seven books of nonfiction, including Privacy and The Unwanted Sound of Everything We Want.  He is also a contributing editor of Harper’s Magazine and Virginia Quarterly Review. His website is here:  https://garretkeizer.com.