One of the many challenges in life is in knowing where you’re supposed to sit. I slid into the wrong pew at a funeral 40 years ago and still smart from the hard looks I got. Here’s a church pew poem by Bruce Pemberton, who lives in Palouse, Washington. It’s from the literary journal “Third Wednesday.”

Autumn 2017

There’s coffee and pie

with a widow from church.

Why do you sit

in the back pew? she asks.

I’m close enough, I say.

Can I sit back there with you?

I’ve always sat there, I tell her,

with my same two friends,

and their clicking oxygen pumps.

One sat next to me for years,

called herself my church girlfriend,

who metastasized, telling me she was

tired of waiting to die.

Now, there’s just my 88-year-old friend,

his pump echoing in the sanctuary,

and there’s that empty

space between us.

I’d like to invite the widow to sit there,

but I miss my dead friend’s laugh,

her loving stories about her husband,

and how we were always

glad to see one another.

I tell the widow all this.

What if I just sat there? she asks.

It’s a free country, I tell her,

and she smiles.