Heaven

is just a garden, really.

A plot of land where you might reach down

to touch the snow

and crystallize.

 I don’t know this for a fact.

 Fact is

joy is as close as I’ve come

to a second act.

 Maybe further.

During a craniotomy, metal screws were used

to refasten the wedge

of skull

that had been removed

 to expose my brain.

 The material

almost human.

Materially shaped with flame and driven into

the mind.

 Cybernetic,

 I can still pass

through a metal detector without setting off

an alarm.

 The fire unharmed.

 Look through

 my head

and see the great waffle iron of the garden

glowing.

From the window seat you’ll notice

 angels skiing.

 Don’t take it from me.

 There’s a god, right?

I got that straight from the horse’s mouth

 when those

 who inherited

the earth

decided they’d inherited idiom.

A neurosurgeon will tell you that using metal

 to patch

 a skull

is equivalent to picking up branches

and placing them

 back on a tree.

Decorating purgatory.

 In the air

 cirrus,

stratus, and alto imitate aspects of the healed—

 nonstop shadows

 on an MRI.

Launch me into the atmosphere and eventually

I’ll want to return

 to the field

 where I was born

 despite the fact that it’s burning.

There’s joy, even in hell.

 Artificial time,

 painted reeds,

the garden soaring, soulless, shaken like a snow

globe.

When I fly, I fly

though a metal detector

before joining the seraphim.

 No alarm,

 no end.

Now I have a little more time with the flowers

that interrupt

 the runway’s

 lift.

Thank you for this gift.