So There

 

So There

I wish there was a heaven

With everything promised

Without the fires and judgement

And resurrections of bodies

And where we didn’t have to sing

Praises and question why

I’d add my mother’s arms around me

And a white grand piano

And meeting Beethoven

And Emily Dickinson

And so many others it would take

All day to name them

But I’d have eternity to sit down

And chat with them one by one

We’d all be our old selves

Not new selves who sound boring

But how would we find each other

With all the billions already there

Would we get a kind of GPS

And a magic plane or train or car

I couldn’t live in heaven without the

Ones I loved being right there

And the ones I didn’t love not so there

It all sounds so complicated

And unmanageable and undoable

But I can dream

Of my own kind of heaven

Can't I?

MM 11/16/21

Mad Woman Musings.

Or..........

In a world of
Constant connection
I am lonely
For
My mother,
My best friend,
My tribe.

And I wonder
How old
Everyone is
In heaven

If there is one.
And why?
And what do we
Look like
As we arrive?

Are our faces
Frozen forever
Into the face
We die in

Or do we
Look like we did
At sixteen
Or twenty five.

Or how do we find
The ones gone before
Without human shapes
Or is that all just magic

Like radar or blue tooth
Like ESP or ouija boards
Or crystal balls.

And who's
Keeping track of
The 113 billion
Who have already
Died?

And are religions
Separated
From each other.
And will atheists
Be surprised
Or disappoimted?

Death

Much talk about death lately in the stuff I read and on the airwaves.

On the radio coming home last night, there was a most interesting chat about Death Cafes. I wouldn't mind hosting one. Seriously. So very many people are squeamish about the grim reaper. But out here on the Edge? It would be a further notation on my "she's nuts, isn't she?" file.

What carries most people through the idea of their own death is the thought of the wonderful afterlife awaiting them surrounded by those beloveds (what about the behateds?) gone before them, clearing a space on the sofa so to speak.

What would you do all day, I ask them.

Praise God, or some such form of an answer comes back at me.

Privately, I think: what an incredibly boring existence that would be.

I mean, I imagine meeting my mother in the afterlife. What on earth would we talk about? She'd know everything wouldn't she, having observed all and sundry, the bad and the good and the pitiful, in the 45 years since she left us.

"Mum, will I tell you about my play?"

"Oh my Pet I saw it all, it was great and your thought processes to get there were very interesting too."

Long Pause.

"You'd have liked your great-granddaughter, Mum."

"Oh, darling, I watch her all the time, look, come sit down by me and we'll watch her together."

Long Pause.

I mean seriously now, wouldn't you rather watch paint dry? Except I'm damn sure there's no paint in heaven.

And the praise God bit?

Wouldn't you think She'd have enough of that nonsense? You know hymns 'n psalms 'n stuff echoing unendingly 24/7 at Her from down here below already.

I mean I can see Her now. clutching Her eardrums, closing Her eyes, shouting at the billions of dead, now risen, at Her feet:

"For feck's sake, would you all get a bloody life?"

And speaking of heaven.....