Your Trip to Paradise

 

I

 

At 3:00 a.m. on a black kettle night,

a yen for Paradise snaps you awake.

Rising, you pack ridiculous flimsy clothes -

shirts without sleeves,

pants without legs,

shoes without a hint of protection. 

  

You commit this crime in faith,

Commit it in passion and a kind

of boulder-hoisting desperation.

 

You carefully make your bed.

In case you don’t return, in case

Indiscriminate survivors blunder through

your private domain.

 

Bent on Paradise,

you want to leave Perdition

in an ordered state worthy of a

benevolent obituary.

 

Stepping through the door,

the night hits your face and

you take note: this is not a dream.

The sun, held back by fermented rain,

and the liquor of nocturnal recline,

shows no sign of appearing.

 

You board the metal bird in the guise

of a Boeing 747 and

close your eyes as it lifts from the sliver of earth.

 

You are not alone.

Through the square of layer glass, you see the beautiful creature,

the who of you, the yes of you,

the now and then and hope of you,

the transformed you after you accept

yourself as the soul you were

you were fashioned to be.

 

This astonishing you runs at break-neck speed.

But you are not out of breath.

Colored in twilight, your legs drum the delighted sky.

You run outside the strapped-in shell of you,

patiently waiting to make your acquaintance. 

 

Studying you, you gape amazed. 

You are ageless.

Empowered by engines not your own,

Endearing and enduring through weakness,.

through storms meant to grow you wings,

through sunflower gardens turned toward the moon,

rivers of ice flowing uphill to sky,

through yearning and angst all forgotten.

There you go, swift through trees hung fat with I-can-do-anything-leaves,

diving backwards, neck arching, legs stretching,

your toes pointed to God.

 

You are dizzy with balance, 

giddy with peace. 

Leaving a trail of shrinking lights,

you think primordial thoughts - thoughts of fire, of flood, of disarmed fate.

You are a river undamned by God. 

The current is swift, but it is not against you. 

Rejoicing and weeping,

a flock of crystal stars fly beneath you.

With wings of diamonds and bone

and feathers of colored surprise, they churn the wind for the transfiguring mill of you.    

 

 

 

II

 

For this excursion children alone are permitted to sit in exit rows. 

In case of a crash, only the children can open the doors. 

It has always been this way, but only is it safe to be one.

As a child, you behold yourself in a lime green shirt.

Or is it red?  Blue maybe?
You decide on a dotted Swiss dress with a yellow belt.
You remember bare hands, fingers dipping into a sugar bowl
and giving your tongue a treat.
Yes, the hands are small and the child is you.     

You look down. 

You want to know this two-legged shape attached to you and you to it.   
But it is not a completed you. 
Your body is merely a sentence that carries the noun of you,
You are a fabulous stuttering phrase carried by the ill-stated truth of you.
But it is never, not ever complete enough.

And now you remember your former bed, the warmth of it and 

how it felt to be in the arms of it, how it protested with your every turn
and how the covers were never exactly the weight you wanted them to be.

You remember God’s smothered voice, the feel of your hands against your ears. 

In the knowledge of the smallness of your hands you agree to stop apologizing,
to stop making excuses.

Yours is a story that keeps being written.

And not a story meant to be written alone.

In the story you wrote alone you stayed stuck behind a curious door,

afraid to try the handle, afraid to risk its turning.
But the nudge to do so insisted.   

All along you’ve questioned the nudge.

God.

God himself explains the nudge.

God himself explains your hesitation.
Your fear of the nudge has to do with God.
Only God makes sense of fear. 

In Perdition there is much to overcome, to improve,

to remodel, destroy, amend, excuse,
flatter,  impress, refute.

Paradise turns fixing obsolete.

In Paradise the water brims with tears nobody needs to cry.
And the birds?
The birds derive from angels.

The clocks are clowns and time is hour free. 

The cutting wind has dropped its blade and
grown a cotton tongue, and all the words are waterfalls and
all the dots have i’s. 

The shredding cloaks of poverty transform to gleaming gowns and broken doors
are used as boats and oars are pulled by skies.
In Paradise your questions beg and answers grow like alms.
And yes and no are Simese twins and Mondays carry songs. 

In Paradise you are who you were born to be and no one thinks to drown.