Friday poem

I'm posting an original poem every Friday for a year. Some kind of clerical error leads to eternal consequences.

Afterlife

My headlamp on the black walls, coal glittering

like sapphire.

The urgent roll of thunder far off, the bass rumble just above me.

Fine dust silting down.

Then darkness.

Three days since I've eaten, but I'm no longer hungry.

There are others nearby,

their voices weaker by the hour.

I hear them best when I'm quiet and begin to dream.

I would like to see my grandfather.

I would like to pray but I've forgotten how, and me, a preacher's kid, my wild time so brief, so necessary. In my dream I've gone to Heaven, but it's all wrong.

The angels ignore me, or maybe they can't see me.

They speak a language I don't understand and

bow to a divine presence I can't discern. The rain still comes, always from the west.

These green hills look familiar

but the grass beneath my feet springs back

as soon as my heel is lifted.

The forest floor is barren, with no death

to darken the soil.

Bright buds so eternally new, their beauty so crisp I can't bear to look at them. I lie down on the cool, damp earth, unafraid now of serpents.

Why do I sleep? I don't work and am not tired.

Now I dream of home, my land, my family,

their faces fading,

sepia now, color washed away each night.

I will awake lessened.

The first night I lost the memory of

the particular slant of sunlight on the white vapor settled in the valley

below my homestead that cold Spring morning.

The second, my son's small cry.

Last night, the warm gravity of

my wife's body as she held me in place

beneath the quilt just a few more moments. Tonight, I will lose her name.