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Often I am Permitted to Refuse a Meadow
I reject your premise, refuse the assertion
that the point of life is death, or that after
death comes a great reward. I deny an all
of us—Christians, Buddhists, Hindus, Jews,
atheists and Muslims—rubbing shoulders
in companionable glow, angels floating past
like Warhol’s Silver Clouds. I do and I do not
care who is there. Leave each one
of us to have our own kind
of afterparty. I cannot say what it will be,
I am not there now to see it. I reject
that death is the litmus test, and I will
argue with Mary Oliver too,
not every life is wild and precious
(perhaps it is), but the grasshopper
has no choice, no poem for its own
reflection. Unless its hymn is made
of grass. See? I too, try to press
something to it, deny the grass
its own integrity. I too, am looking
to make someone else reassure me
grass cannot ultimately be
the point of grass. Instead of
heaven, let me be rewarded here.
Keep me in the meadow, independent
of anything else I might want
to dream. Keep me from the sin
of adding my own significance
to anything. |
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