Heaven

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Heaven first draft written on 5/7/24

It's like trying to describe light
or more specifically the kind of light you see in a Caravaggio;
and how could I begin to describe it? This light from somewhere else
just off the edge of the frame of the painting- 

it's like that, right now, just out of reach.

How do you describe a place you've never been to
but have only read about?
But those words- if I was a depressed, darkly scorched 

and forgotten well, those words would be water; 

the kind of water you can only find on a summer 

day, where the sun feels like it's inches

from your toasting body, where your vertebral disks 

are shrinking like raisins 

and all you can imagine are waterfalls gushing into your mouth.

But those words tell me I've seen it all my life, just above me-

continually declaring the glory of God

and proclaiming his handiwork.

But I'm not like an ancient Hebrew: my imagination 

has been so shoved full of something else

the sardine imaginations of others shoe-horned into my mind

my eyeballs squashed and changed 

and now I see what someone else wants me to see 

something else-

a vast, endless, emptiness.