Epiphany XIV: Nigh
by James B. Nicola
Almost done with this draft. The hour is nigh.
Have the latest revisions been enough
to please The Buyer of All Finished Work?
Or have I more to polish, pound and press
of which, over-immersed, I’m unaware?
Last draft, our heroine (same name as mine)
heard from a spectral voice (as I once did)
that it was not enough simply to leave
the party of the mob. Since then, she has
converted (as have I) a dozen souls
like her to see the light. Are twelve enough?
Are twelve ever enough to rue and cease
lynching? My ancestors are on their way.
I won’t find out until the hour is up.
Since fiction can be true, more true than fact,
and since her story is my story, too,
and my time is beginning to run out,
I tremble. But the fear seems a good fear,
the opposite of which, I hear, is hope;
its end, after The End: a new beginning.
Page one, chapter one, once more. Ready now.
Open to what inspiration alights
for final drafts of novel, play, and film—
which live forever—and of life, which won’t.
And with the openness I feel I might
have, in the end, all the time I’ll need.
James B. Nicola is the author of eight collections of poetry, the latest three being Fires of Heaven: Poems of Faith and Sense, Turns & Twists, and Natural Tendencies. His nonfiction book Playing the Audience: The Practical Actor’s Guide to Live Performance won a Choice magazine award. A graduate of Yale, he has received a Dana Literary Award, two Willow Review awards, Storyteller's People's Choice award, one Best of Net, one Rhysling, and eleven Pushcart nominations—for which he feels stunned and grateful.
