Lines composed coming home from Florida,
Janice and I, in March, 2001,
beginning with an EASTER acrostic:

Expectations,
Aspirations,
Sorrows,
Tests,
Endurances,­
Remembered now,

we speed North, up I-75.

     "Do we have time to go to Milledgeville?"
      I ask.

     "Since we may never come this way again,
     let's spend the hours, and not be sorry when
     some task looms higher than this hill ahead,"
     I hear her say.

And so we go and find our way
through town and past the "Private Residence"
to the blossomed gravesite, fenced and locked,
as if to warn that night, like some grotesque character,
will overtake us, too;
and Flannery O'Connor, nowhere in sight,
seems still to speak of life and essence,
although nothing rises to converge.

     "Well, it was worth it,"
     I declare,
     some miles on the road.
    
     "We'd always have been sorry,"
     I hear her reassure,
     "if we had not stopped,
     and then, for ever after
     thought we had missed some Revelation."

So I drive on and speed right through Atlanta,
remembering a moment of grace.