The Shortest Distance

Perhaps the dead long for light, long for the sky and stars.

Why we fold them in boxes, shelve them neatly in rows

six feet beneath a world they lived long enough to die in,

I do not know.

But who can help those deserving heaven?

Even the statues turn away; angels with eyes lifted

or heads bent in prayers for the living because soon enough,

our turns will come. They try not to hear the dead who are good

tossing in their graves with desperate talk: Which way is up?

Was that a crow this morning?

Because the good are perfect, they are not tortured by memories

so they forget themselves. They lie with the damned

and those left to wonder, who try to give directions with talk of love

and light, the shortest distance between ground and sky. Remember God?

Those in waiting ask the good who, dumb as dirt, stagger for the answer

to a god too distant to wake the dead.