O afterwards

And may the old life, that rotting flesh and treasure
find in the good pleasure

of Christ, a forgetfulness complete: that these sins, however
humanly deliberate my misbehaviors,

be blotted from the record of God, raptured like the night’s thief,
forever gone, newly clean.

And may this new self shine like the moon shone, long ago, before
she was rent by the devil’s incisor,

a whole, round body not meant to be broken in phases.
And may she sing your praises

like Golgotha sings of a tree: for there is nothing empty
that cannot be filled. And may the sea

and all things swimming it thirst no longer for Living Water.
And may the Father

know the Daughter, even as the end of the earth unfolds.
And may I turn to gold.