His little religion
of common things
uncommonly loved
served him well.
Especially in Hell.

*

When the sickbed sunlight
banishes shadows
like the noontime tin
of the storm cellar door
long, long before,
he is the blaze
it takes a man to raise,
he is the stone-
stepped dark a child
goes feelingly down.

*

As if to be
were to be
by oblivion
given
and forgiven
heaven.

This poem appears in Christian Wiman’s collection Once in the West (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2014). Photo: courtesy of Ken Childress.