A Fantasia

Maybe heaven really is that lush green pasture
We’ve all seen, undulating across countless

Movie screens, those scenes where long-lost
Loved ones & childhood pets slow-motion

Rush into our eternally lifeless arms. A blue-
Screen sky blips familial flashbacks as a new-

Age piano tinkles in time with swaying grass.
Or maybe there is something to this idea

Of the firmament, the hereafter, the home in glory-
Land.  In the sky, lord, in the sky.  Streets paved

With gold, crisscrossing greenhouse gasclouds,
SUV’s sporting Bush/Cheney bumperstickers

Slowcruising an infinite Strip, blasting Stryper,
Drivers & passengers alike tebowing at each redlight.

Or maybe afterlife is much the same as beforelife.
Our nonexistent selves afternoon-napping in all that

Nothingness, just waiting for the rude ass-slap
In the delivery room, the shanty, the thatched hut.

But my hope is that we all awake at some corner table
In live oak shade, grackles squawking up palm trees

In a south Texas mercado, cold cervezas sweating
Beside a tequila shot, lime slices, two men taking

The tiny stage, both in workclothes & cowboy hats,
One, heavy-lidded, strumming his bajo sexto, the other

Bright-eyed & paunchy, punching his button accordion,
Singing that old ranchera, the one about the country girl

He left behind, the girl he’ll love until the end of time.

About Harold Whit Williams

William's first poetry collection, Waiting For The Fire To Go Out, is available from Finishing Line Press, and my poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Atlanta Review, Oxford American, Oklahoma Review, Slipstream, Tulane Review, and other fine journals. Also, in my spare time, I am lead guitarist for the critically acclaimed power-pop band Cotton Mather.

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