In the Shadow of the Sun

By Michael Umphrey

First Place

When I knew him, my grandfather prayed

with his body, feeding cattle or training a horse,

holding to the promise that all this

is momentary, a shred of the work and glory

ahead: “Live difficult,” he said, then laughed.

“It won’t last long.”

His faith glittered

like salmon in a silted stream. He waited for decades

in fields where labor was patience, one way

of fighting the wars of want that warped the temporal

sensorium where he was held like a falcon

in a gunnysack—currents of sky, his blood told him,

were out there. “As man is,” he told me, “God

once was. As God is, man may become.”

He stood

his distance from the world, as tired and virile at times

as Moses, watching young children learn by touch

the sharp edges. They wanted games with easier rules,

planning fun till the fun ran out, then starting over,

older, with less room. Each time with less room,

a game they denied choosing getting tighter.

They laughed at him, my grandfather and his

peculiar gait, his old way of being in no hurry,

certain of infinity, living as he did

amid life vaster than Earth, visions sheering

through the brevity of flesh with unerring trajectories

that spoke to him of Light the sun blocked

with its puny burning.