The Mansions of Heaven
The Mansions of Heaven
I’ve birthed poems that still miss attention from friends
that are company to me. Downpours? Keep me dry!
Life provides, both in comings and goings (some fear).
I find joy in the knowledge some things can’t get grasped
that we’ve worth past our ‘sell date,’ own space on love’s shelf.
All sea’s shells still grace beaches whose fate is just sand
when their colors have faded, their spiral caves smashed.
A child’s wonder can visit both sand and God’s love.
All life groks that life is! Is it Death that pretends
its thoughts count in this life? Does Death laugh? Can it cry?
Tell me, what can Death own that a fool would hold dear?
Is there something Death hopes for (can Death’s hand be clasped)?
If Death ‘IS,’ then what’s death without life? Is ‘itself’
to be treasured, its absence a victory stand?
Hmm? If nothing had value, would nothing get trashed?
Should a hand you would prosper count less than its glove?
Words Muse links are each mansions (1) past ancestors carve
out of air whose mute poems form cities that shine
on a hill (with worth seen from a distance), each star
that inhabits the heavens though blue-washed by day
(sky obscured but still there). Words are pearls we secrete
to smooth what pricks the flesh in the shells of our time.
Though we shed words like skin a cicada forsakes,
they inhabit the trees or the shrubs of our choice
till they don’t, till they’re sand too, or food for a voice
that finds own ‘hill’ to climb. All life has what it takes
to give breath to a city that struggles with rhyme.
Though rhyme’s only breath’s air, it’s still shell at God’s feet.
Can a poet not dream there’s a God, or just pray?
If life ends, we’re still blessed to have been who we are,
not just one in a trillion but branch of True Vine.
Oh, it’s not from a lack of God’s love that fools starve.
Long Tooth
January 6th in 2022
Poet's Notes:
(1) Are there not entire universes waiting to be discovered in each drop
of water? Has a 'word' (of any language) ever been uttered that does
not 'source' a mansion in heaven that shelters God's children?
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