If I Should Die Tonight

If I should die tonight
it would be like stepping out onto a big pond’s

lily pads with all the other frogs

combing out my hair and
flames falling onto a plate

the horse muzzle that follows me
finally coming so close I can

feel its breath
sweet as clover all over me and the

sheer delight of simply galloping

Hills become flat and
broad valleys rolling

Sky melts back into its
first kaleidoscope

rotating its rainbows

White gloves handle me
and swans crowd the air with an

avalanche of feathers rising on its
updrafts

I’d say goodbye to everything at once
and hello to God Who would

come through the aether to catch me
afloat as always but now with even

greater buoyancy

Let giraffes crowd around my bed
their sexy eyelashy eyes shining as the

whole bed rises

and all the windows of the world
open of their own accord

to let me out into the sound of
tubular bells and gurgling waters and

newborns opening their eyelids for the
first time and

looking around
their inner light blending with the

light they’ve been born into
where everything happens and

nothing happens
in the instant of our lives and deaths

but this
sudden awakening

---

5/25/12 (from Down at the Deep End)

Categories: Poems, Death