My aunt Irma

I’m sitting in Starbucks listening to Iron and Wine playing,
"Such great heights,"
when I open my sister-in-law’s email and read the news that my aunt has died,
at midnight.
She would have seen a century next month.
Resilient as leather and old farm machinery, she aged well enough.
Even as she entered her last cloistered years,
slowly stripped of this worlds light,
she was prepared by her long Disziplin des Gebets.
Aunt Irma, iron and wine lady, had attained great height, and now, higher yet.
But I do remember her laugh;
a kind of bubbling embarrassment of delight.