I Need Only Imagine
By John Herlihy

I need only imagine,
To make certain things real.
We pull dreams down from the clouds
That fit snugly into reality with their appeal.

I need only imagine,
What life would be like if we were alone.
The desperation we would feel in the solitude
As though abandoned in the desert, a bleached bone.

I need only imagine,
If our life in this world went on forever.
We may come to realize just how impossible
Such a predicament might have us wish to say never.

I need only imagine,
If the arrow of time should halt its movement.
Birds would stop flying in mid-air, snow no longer fall
The seasons frozen in time, never again to offer amusement.

I can only imagine,
If the soul laid down never to again arise.
What would it mean to have the death of the soul
It would mean the death of love, of beauty, or truth likewise.

I can only imagine,
A poem no longer captures a moment’s beauty.
When every poetry recital opens the petals of life’s flower,
The rhythms and rhymes echo idly as merely so much booty.

I can only imagine,
A vast sea without any shore.
The endless expanse of a watery world
That offers no reprieve, no release, nothing more.

I can only imagine,
What death has for us in store
We may not see it coming, nor when it arrives
As I lay down and die upon the floor

I have no need to imagine,
A human soul with no divine counterpart.
The Spirit that gives us humans our life, our breath
Who leads us beyond the horizon at the moment of death.