Improv: Bond's "Death Mask"

The hymnist irons his socks at night and calls me up,
tells me it's the end of the world, that I should move underground.
Last Sunday, during service, he flirted with Mrs. Dander
by the organ's pipes. I thought I saw him float up with the reeded air.
The hymnist has composed something not new but just new
enough, newer than the old and rugged and good and old;
he taps it out on the upright, a spatter of curious birds. I visit
with him in the fellowship hall, we clamber about
past the trays of micowaved, canned, corn creamed anythings,
he sweats through his suit, wipes down his face
with a used handkerchief--a theft--says I should take a good hard
look at which direction the grass grows, does it sprout up or lean,
should we follow and mask ourselves in a chorus, a verse,
an aria's fluttered peroration, in the signature the ground
forges across our faces' dotted lines.