L'ultimo viaggio
       

This will be your last
trip, the friends of my friend
say when I arrive in the small
city near the town near the house
where our friend lives and is now,
            I am told, dying.

But for six days I almost
forget while my friend and I
read Rilke together, recalling
the years—so many! and it
is as if now were then
            and then always.

On the train back to Rome
it is dark and then it is not
so dark but there's mist
in the valley and clouds
over it, white against
            the darkness

through which bare
trees begin to appear,
and some grass, grass
as we are, appears to green
the earth, earth as we are,
            from which

a flock of birds—white,
are they doves?—rises,
then settles, a flock of white
sheep appears, then more
birds, white into white
            mist and then

between some distant
hills, the sudden fire
of the sun, and I think of sitting
beside the fire in the house
of my friend, and I take
            it in, I think

of Rilke, think of my friend
and her two good friends,
I think of her last journey,
soon to come, ultimo, into
the fire, the dark, the mist,
            the white night.

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Copyright © 2020 Martha Collins All rights reserved
from Presence: A Journal of Catholic Poetry
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission