And Why Not?
Sitting in a café, I overhear a small girl ask,
how old are the souls in heaven?
Her grandmother does not answer directly,
thinks heaven must be like home once was
with all the furniture, photographs, and dishes
restored to their proper places. I imagine
that fellow across the way, doodling on a napkin,
sees heaven painted by Van Gogh’s ghost
in thick layers of red, blue and yellow,
ever-fresh sunflowers and irises blooming.
And the scientific sort in the corner
would say there is no such thing
as time’s fractured clock
in eternity. Can my father be
both the brash American soldier
my mother fell for
and the forty-year old doctor
he was when he died?
I wonder if he could be one age
in her heaven and another in mine
and if I might visit hers
and not intrude or seem a stranger.
Surely heaven holds no such dilemmas.
And so a girl might think of
heaven as a place where souls
embrace without arms, smile without faces,
sing without tongues –
known by their essence in our own
ephemeral hearts.
(Slant)
