The Skin of Meaning. Keith Flynn
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and mathematicians spar with
sediment for the symmetrical spoils,
though sometimes the occasional flash
flood will claim a tourist or two.
In Heaven, to whom does one confess?
And when does Death show his face?
Perhaps there the water is made of silk,
and the substance washing around you
is called Grace. Seven white coroner’s
sheets covered seven unarmed black
men, who were killed by white police
this week in America, and each of the
deceased’s mother or wife believed
their beloved was in a Gucci stall being
fitted for wings. Every policemen thinks,
there but for the Grace of God go I.
Does the Governor of Heaven care about
the color of the murderers? Is there a
great slide, shaped like a bell curve, that
drops the unworthy straight into Hell?
Or streets paved with gold, diamond
Jacob’s Ladders, leading the freshly
christened cherubs on escalators into
the segregated first class seats?
On Earth as it is in Heaven, says the
solemn congregation, where the lion
lives in harmony with the lamb.
Awake for five straight days, eating
speed and drinking tequila, Mickey
Newbury swore to me that he’d
seen Jesus, and how did he know?
Had to be Him, said Mickey, He had
on an eggshell robe with the letters JC
monogrammed on the breast pocket.
When 4-year-old Colton Burpo told his
father, Pastor Todd, that he had visited
Heaven while having his appendix
removed, he had sat in JC’s lap and
summoned angels with halos riding
rainbow horses and singing his favorite
song, dressed to the nines, with fashionable
robes and purple sashes, and best of all,
no lines for the rollercoasters. Trayvon
Martin’s parents said their slain son was
in Heaven with God, and was wearing his
hoodie. Plato’s assertions put the temporal
body in peril, but the immortal soul could
eventually have a conversation with anyone.
The pagans thought the soul just stewed,
until the Captain of the New Groove Ship
descended from Heaven and united every
saved soul, dead or alive, under one cool
banner, and cast out old Scratch, and put
out that Lake of Fire, just as soon as the
wicked were tossed in, and then it was
fireworks and roasted hot dogs for all
eternity. But what if this is it? This one
wild life, on a single blue pebble, caught
in a vast webbing of dimensions? I take
no pleasure in the capricious exclusion
of any known Heaven. I spent my child-
hood asking forgiveness of a father who
did not exist, and could not listen, a myth
in the settled universe whose conjuring
only adds to the random strangeness
of humans, now clearly standing in the
margins of their own demise, faced with
the unyielding despair and certainty that
this galaxy must end in ruin, with our
species scattered among the celestial
debris. I cannot fault any being that
seeks a balm in some perfect afterlife’s
Wonderland, though the nature of their
prosperity gospel means one man’s
salvation is achieved upon the broken
back of his neighbor. The soul’s habitation,
should it exist, leads to the imagination’s
redemptive force. We are what we make,
and the making is love, and love is the
mystery that sustains us. Any tacit
acknowledgement of religion’s cheap
tricks opens the vistas of the unknown.
The higher we climb, the world lays
wider in our scope. The more I know,
the less certain I am, and my self-
deception grows commensurate with
my ignorance. What we have is here,
where we are is now, in Time’s despicable,
multi-tentacled clutches, in the habitat
of dance and feathers, building our
headdress and staking our territory,
lending our love’s disguise to the march.
PRAYER
Red spruce trees
that yield
their wood
for the violins
made in
Cremona Italy
grow in the same
valley and have
done so since the
1500s including
the Stradivarius
tables and arms
that produce
the sweetest sounds
known to man
650 or so
instruments
worth millions
played by students
in worship of a tone
they cannot
reproduce
any other way
A single man
stands
fingering the strings
in the Dolemites
among
the reverent limbs
of the lovely spruce
making a song
that