Almost a year later, from a train near Innsbruck,
I saw a woman about his age. For a moment
I glimpsed the half-hidden bench where she sat, her face
turned away from the passing train, all that speed
and purposefulness. Her dog slept nearby, its head
under her hand. She sat very straight, her back
against the slats of the bench as if it were a pew
and she staring at the man who dies so slowly
on his Cross. “Sacred Conversations” is the phrase for paintings
that embody her wordlessness, her calm moment
near a meadow, haloed by snow and ragged peaks.
The people in these Sacred Conversations
stand silently, looking down and away from each other, united
by devotion to what they cannot name or fully understand.

My father and I almost stepped outside
our separate frames and spoke our love. Instead, first one of us died
and then the other took a train that passed near
the woman, her sleeping beast and the silent mountain.
Who knows, really, why a father and his son
must sometimes spend whole years together, not even
looking at each other. As if a third presence,
perhaps a dying God, demanded their linked aversions,
a Sacred Conversation instead of something
profane, born of this earth and their own small time together.