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?