Eternity’s Incursion

A poem

Bladensburg Road just across from

New York Avenue is a lot like Hell,

I imagine, at least on weekday mornings.

People think only of themselves

as they make that bitter commute

from Maryland to D.C. for work,

the first headaches of the day

burrowing deep into their skulls

as they navigate a maze of potholes

sharp enough to readjust spines

and send blazing coffee sailing

onto pants freshly ironed.

Deafening construction,

bumper-to-bumper idling,

gray ghosts of exhaust

choking us all.

We honk, muttering expletives,

and the lights change too fast

for anyone to get anywhere,

some practical joke by an

impious bureaucrat.

If this drive isn’t an echo of Hell,

it is at least an acute form of

sanctification.

And it’s where I’ll be buried someday,

I think, in the cemetery on Bladensburg

Road just off New York Avenue.

I’ve spent so many hours fighting

and fearing for my life here,

I might as well wait for Christ here, too.

I smile sometimes at the thought

of waking in the eschaton

freshly dug up, somehow, from the dirt

shaking it from my hair

brushing it from my shoulders

and grinning all the time

because He will have arrived

at last, and because for all its hellish

features, this stretch of Bladensburg

Road where the cemetery sits is where

eternity pressed itself so defiantly

into temporality during my days,

shouting into rush hour’s fray

so urgently I sighed each time

I drove past it.

You see, as the traffic crawls by

and the drivers swerve left and right

— never using turn signals, that would

be a sign of weakness —

some tombstones are dewy, bright

catching the light 

and others are ancient and mossy

while the saints beneath lie

side by side, like so many seeds

planted.

And across the road, if the drivers just

look up from their phones, there’s

a foretaste of the orchard beyond

the City of Peace to come,

a quiet corner of the arboretum

so lovingly tended it makes one ache and

wonder how lovely Eden must have been

in a world unbroken.

Sweeping evergreens,

towering oaks,

and dreamy willows

shade empty benches

holding lonely ghosts

awaiting Christ’s return,

just like the saints wait

across the street.

Hell is loud on the road itself —

for now.

But it is outnumbered.

The eternal and beautiful hem it in

on both sides, squeezing those who

pass by, asking them to remember

and to hope.

I can’t think of a better place

to wait for the renewal of all things,

or to celebrate Christ’s triumph

over Hell — final, definitive, complete.

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