Report from the Afterlife
        Another believes dimly ... in a place where the dead can meet and talk quietly.
                Robert Hass

Even though we hadn't expected to be saved, it was a relief
          after the death experience
(bees or something like them, buzzing in your ears)

to recover under such a calming pink sky, pink as a ripe peach
          you could reach out and pluck. Although I'd performed
carelessly, at the time I had no examples to follow

beyond the conditions my parents required for their love.
          Fields of intractable lightness, simulacrum of birds.
Eternity is the sentence that startles the mind.

We look sort of like we used to only better,
          as if we've been Photoshopped, although
since we're spirits we're kind of wavery anyway,

as if seeing each other through windshields like relatives
          being blown a final kiss, our bodies, cosmically speaking,
unadorable as they flushed all the spoilage and bling

down their drains. Unreliable was the flesh, and stubborn.
          Our favorite foods maintain their perfect temperatures:
fried chicken, iced tea, Jell-O squares in strawberry and lime,

each with a tiny star of whipped cream. No alcohol
          of course, or seafood for obvious reasons.
We can see in the distance, along with a few

lion and lamb pairs lying down together, other families
          scattered around their own picnic tables
feeling all deer-like and mottled on the inside

you can tell from the love. No atonements or judgments
          being rendered, thank God. To break the monotony
(I mean that in a good way) a choir of Cherubim floats by

every few hours like a school of silvery fish,
          cleansed, unfeathered (I'm putting this
into mortal language since time doesn't exist here)

and leads us in a hymn. Rapture is inscrutable the way
          an ocean is inscrutable. There's an ark on the water
to handle the goats, someone in authority in case

transcendence happens next. We haven't been told
          if there is anything after this, the present afterlife,
or if this is it, not that everything here isn't perfect

(imagine verdure awash in the coppice of adumbral light)
          it's just that sometimes...
I feel like disturbing things...rending one angel into two

just for the fun of it, as if I didn't appreciate all the sacrifices,
          the wings and the prayers that are broadcast
from beyond the ancient old-growth canopy

you can sometimes catch a sliver of blackness behind,
          you know, just to yank someone's chain,
mess something up that's really good.

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Copyright © 2019 Marilee Richards All rights reserved
from The Double Zero
Bauhan Publishing
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission