Descriptions of Heaven
Got your note
from the canyon—
glad to know you’re
there again.
& why go
so often now?
Old as I am, I’ve
never been there
since, well, forever—&
can you and I imagine or
remember then?
I don’t imagine I’ve
ever gotten such
fine descriptions of
heaven from you
even when you
were bringing your
school drawings home,
sixty years back.
Glad to have your
note about that
chilling warming
canyonlight, those well-
marked morning paths,
evening stars raining,
tent walls wiffling in
wind, taste of campfire
smoke, coals murmuring,
your own foot odor, your
back creaking, your
pencil screeching
in the quietness.
I’m going where your
words take me. Glad to
follow them alone so
far down, far in, beyond
our estranged distance.
Once you brought
home a drawing of your
pretend dad, who
crowded the small
sheet with his greatness.
You said his name
was Goddam, my
favorite expression
at the time. A mighty
man, his big hair
high, big eyes and
mouth smeary with joy.
His strong arms too straight
for elbows. His fingers,
ten on each hand,
long as rays of
sun or lightning.
The thing’s still taped
to the fridge. Come see.
This one speaks to displacement
she said and
thanked us
for coming to
the reading
and read
her last one.
In the car
the ride spoke to
the ride and
I said to the car
So then it’s how
one thing speaks to
another? And does
or doesn’t listen?
The signs spoke
in signs
to the roads
and the roads
spoke to the
darkness they divide.
In the lot
of Wal-Mart
the tall lamps
spoke to the tall lamps
the automatic In door
to the Out.
My empty cart spoke to
the caged cart-herd
and my empty heart to
the full trashcan
at the entrance speaking
to the tradition
of clearly marked
clean entrances.
O Out
O In
I’m trying to explain
why I’ve chosen
to cry my tears here
instead of out there.
The parking spaces
empty at this hour
but never done
speaking
are asking the
full spaces
for help
in understanding.
Kevin McIlvoy, a retired teacher, lives in Asheville, North Carolina, where he is at work on his first book of poems. New poems appear in The Georgia Review, Your Impossible Voice, Willow Springs, Consequence, Barzakh, The Night Heron Barks, JMWW, Still, and other magazines.
