Rock of Ages

My grandmother, just back from the hospital, her heart lost

And returned for a fourth time, sings “Rock of Ages,”

Her voice quavering, graceless, yet determined still

To bring her greatgrandson, cranky and tired, to his rest.

His unaged face lies against her as mine must have

When I listened to the same words floating in air, calling

On Christ who helps us in our helplessness. In her voice

I hear her first husband—drunk, raging—whom she loved

And prayed would die. I hear my grandfather, her second

Husband, who provided until he took cancer home from his

    job,

His lungs a wound that wouldn’t heal. I hear the ghost

Who wants to lie down with her now each time she sleeps.

I hear her heart that should have ended, but has not,

That sings as if time can only bring pain and a way

To take it away. Outside the afternoon is locked in gray,

Little difference between what lies ahead, what’s already

Past. Mourning doves make their sounds of love or sadness.

Of both or neither. I think of the times when, trembling,

I have sung this hymn in which Christ’s wound is a place to

    hide,

A world safe and small as those imagined in my son’s books

Where rabbits and moles, hedgehogs and bears sleep peacefully

In a view of earth we otherwise never get to see.

~Robert Cording