GOING HOME

by Anne Harding Woodworth

Portrait of Grant Wahl by Dan Leydon. “Grant arrived home Monday, December 12, and this transition was handled with the utmost care and sensitivity… An autopsy was performed by the New York City Medical Examiner’s Office. Grant died from the rupture of a slowly growing, undetected ascending aortic aneurysm with hemopericardium. The chest pressure he experienced shortly before his death may have represented the initial symptoms. No amount of CPR or shocks would have saved him. His death was unrelated to COVID. His death was unrelated to vaccination status. There was nothing nefarious about his death. While the world knew Grant as a great journalist, we knew him as a man who approached the world with openness and love.” —Céline Gounder, Grant’s Wife, at Substack.

      In memory of Grant Wahl

The shoot-out wasn’t over

when you left.

But you know by now

that Argentina sent

The Netherlands packing,

a fitting end to a soccer game,

to any game, really,

which is all it is we’re playing.

You, one of the lucky ones—

you turned yours into a living.

Living. You lived to the max,

free to write of parties,

beautiful vistas, catastrophes,

trivia, friends, fears, premonitions.

Your wrote down your observations

of injustice as fluidly as those

of offside or of a shoot-out.

You left early, Grant, probably

just hours before you’d posted

your “Three Thoughts” on the game.

And the Netherlands went home.

Anne Harding Woodworth’s eighth book of poetry, Gender: Two Novellas in Verse, is a Literary Titan Silver Award Winner. Her book Trouble received the 2022 William Meredith Award for Poetry.