a favorite poem by someone else

I was thinking about this poem the other day. I just love it. I don't know if it's the words or the subject matter or the fact that, since I've spent a little time at social gatherings with the author's wife, I can picture her saying the last lines, with her face that reminds me so much of Jami Gertz, whom I love, and with her awesome homey Cajun accent.

From Come Rain, Come Shine by Jack Bedell, 2006
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The Last Supper

Because my wife's the kind of woman
who'd rather see a prison museum
than tour the oldest home in Huntsville,
I find myself in rows of homemade pistols
forged from pipe, shieves filed down from spoons,
and knives made from angle-iron
splayed like Christmas trees to go in easy,
come out like a world of hurt.

The walls around are plastered with oddments:
rodeo flyers, a letter from Clyde Barker
to Henry Ford praising his V-8,
a century of newsclippings announcing riots,
executions, politicians' visits,
craft shows, and new construction --
simple enough for the prison's resume.

A life-sized cell and Old Sparky
frame the whole experience.
The distance between the two could never be enough
for a man who knows the day he's going to die.
I can't wrap my mind around the deliberation
it would take to button my shirt for the last time
or to order my last meal prepared fire hot
and in enough bowls so none of it would touch.

The weight of a man's choices bears down on me
in the menu cards taped to the glass,
and nothing I could choose would lend faith
or direction enough to make Death close up shop
and shuffle back down the hall.

My wife slips in behind me to study scene
as quiet as a warden in the witness box.
"Soft-shelled crabs," she says into my ear."
I wouldn't even have to think about it."