another world ending

Who
–Marie Howe

His steps up the stairs are like summer thunder one or two lakes away.
He comes like a scent rising from a night pond.
He comes like a recurring dream.
like the rain falling through the forest at night, and far away and through the trees
faint – the sound of fiddles
a square of light where a door opens to the dark.
The sound of his climbing is like breathing underwater
And the stumbling is an answer to a prayer no one heard.
Inevitable as daylight, exhaustive as pain,
his climb and his footfall sound like another world
ending
another world ending.