All Is Absolute Perfection

All Is Absolute Perfection
The scholar-philosopher,
white-haired ghost of a life radiantly lived,
speaks at the borders of language,
his last talk ever
in a room with folding chairs
under a rose window—
shards of broken wisdom,
jagged edges sending light.

We strain to hear
through his deafness;
he has wrestled so many gods
and ideas of gods—
now he’s back
in the soul of his first God,
drifting in innocence,
joking with the Unknown—

It fills the room
he smiles through his own impending death
and ours
to reassure us in the tangle
of microphone wires and amplified distortions—
that in this single moment
we are free.

- Barbara McHugh, published in Magnolia Review volume 6, issue 2