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.