Friday, April 1, 2011

Heaven Next Door


I Have Freckles on My Back and Other Things I Know


NASA, via VNWallpapers
 Ever since my sensible no-
nonsense friend Meg
Meredith saw angels
and I met my own (not
one with feathered wings,
however, as had hers, but
mine was genuine enough
as well), and second, ever
since respected scientists
who are not lunatics, as
far as we can tell, have
shot what they insist are
"quarks" (or else they're
not and it's a hoax) and
other dots of matter through
a particle accelerator and
have counted hundreds of
dimensions (it occurs to me,
this too could be their little
joke, though I'm inclined
to credit it)—since then

NASA, via VNWallpapers
 I've thought we ought to find
a passageway through time
and space (not me, per se,
I'm finding-challenged, just
ask anyone) and sally forth
(for fun, for profit, to say
Hey! to Mom) and enter those
no-longer-so-mysterious
adjacent planes, not via
séances and things, they
have their place, and I'm no
physicist or psychic, but
it's logical, I postulate, that
if there are dimensions in
the dozens, we have extra
senses, too, for navigating
them, some inner eyes or
ears, some covered-up
receptors, or some tiny
undulating gold-and-ruby-
glowing clusters of antennae
reaching, finding, holding to
we don’t know what but feel
it must be something like the
hem of the Almighty’s robe

NASA, via VNWallpapers

...and just as surely those to
whom we thus empowered
say, “Stand up and walk,”
shall find their feet, and pain
shall drop from them like
snow, and they shall go about
their day transcendantly, like
slender flames and radiant
as stars; and likewise, those
of whom the claim is made,
“They have passed on,” are
never far away, in fact are
closer than the skin we wear;
and then the senses we don’t
know about will show us
wonders guessed and
dreamed and touched in
prayer, such things are
possible, for we have just
begun to love, and we shall
be together when we choose,
Doorknobs colliding in space
NASA, via VNWallpapers
as one, without the parting—
who's to say it isn't true?
—without the pain and by
the grace of God

Of these things I am certain,
just as much as that I’m
wearing these old stretched
and tattered socks, that I
have freckles on my back,
that sweet peas grow in
spring and bloom in
summertime upon our
little wall, that love's the
reason for it all

1 comment:

  1. For Marc and Bonnie Fellman with love and unceasing prayers

    ReplyDelete