Poets and Poems - Dannye Powell

Before John Died

he asked a group of friends
if we’d bake cookies for the gathering
after his funeral. The men
looked down at their black shoes
and shuffled, one, two. The women
were already flipping through
their recipes, trying to decide
what kind. While he still breathed,
we prepared a feast for his sure death.
Creaming the butter and sugar, alternating
the ghostly flour with the pulsing milk
situated us between here and there,
now and then. How like John
to invite us to a place
where nothing is as it‘s going to be
while everything still is.