For Debbie, but more for myself

For all the reason against religion,
heaven and hell, God and grace,
the grand gears of science
decoupling God from nature,

setting Him aside, a detached idea
like a vine which was thought
to be a root, but was discovered
only to be wrapped around the trunk,

for all the facts funneling down
into the ever-hardening mortar of knowledge
which is used to construct everything sans God
and for all that implies superfluity...

I need a door to believe in.
A door on the other side of the eyelids,
where everything that was a spark
is retrofit with wings and backlit in white.

I need something to imagine her as these days
that's not pixelated, dated and scaled
to some social media utility
and 140-character comments.

Knowing how life and death plays out
to the very last molecule
makes for easier closure,
but harder acceptance.

And so ask me tomorrow,
a week from now, a month,
and my answer will be very different,
but for now:

I need Gothic greystone parapets
topped with golden imprimatur promises,
stained-glass lungs peeking out
from the belly between buttressed ribs.

I don't need to see them, just to know
they exist, like today I know she exists,
sees us all, our crucially mortal throwaway antics,
those forgettable, indispensable perfections,

experiences them with us, bellows her laugh,
leaving my ears to ring
just as she did
on this side of the door.

There's a little genuflect in all of us
for when we need to believe
the screws of our handle on life
are mollied tight to something.



RIP 1/28/12