Memento

We will all leave

                  unfinished business.

pages scattered across a desk

grit on the windowsill

                  where the leaves blow in

laundry at the bottom of the stairs

the fetor of old bacon seeping through the house.

With interminable patience a single white cup

                 endures the dripping faucet.

Your query hangs in the air.

But for a debt paid

a word spoken

a life given

fitly received.

--The Rev. Michael Knowles, poet, preacher, teacher, and cleric in the Anglican Church of Canada, from The Anglican Theological Review, Winter 2020, Volume 102, Number 1