Saint Paul as seen from the High Bridge (Photo: Ramsey County, MN)

I drive across the High Bridge
with Saint Paul sprawling
before me, built on hills like Rome itself.

I see the cathedral piercing the sky and
think
of its domed interior, its mysterious
recesses

and imagine it imploding,
collapsing into the nave,
and how the hills of Saint Paul would go
on being hills,

how everything would compose itself
briefly
around the absence of the cathedral

and then just go on. This is the first time
I have accepted the idea of my own death.

Published in Water-Stone, 2003