Gale Acuff

One day you're dead and there you are, dead but

still alive somehow in the Afterlife

they tell me at church and Sunday School and

I'm only ten years old so I swallow

almost all I hear especially if

it comes from grownups, who by the numbers

are nearer to death than I am, not count

-ing accident or disease or any

other way God has to take us out of

life into the life that lasts forever

--but there I go again, Eternity

is what I mean but I guess I'll find out

for sure what the truth is and it will cost

my life to find out, maybe even my

soul if I have one. I sort of hope not.

Nobody wants to die but my Sunday

School teacher says that's wrong, she wants to since

that's how you finally meet up with God

Almighty, not that you never met Him

before, before you were born that is, and

He put your soul into your body and

there you are, not to mention looking in

on you from time to time throughout your life

to see how you're doing, whether you need

help or don't, in fact could use some trouble

to sort of round you out and make you whole

--oh, she believes a lot of things so much

it's as if she knows them for facts but that's

faith, of course, it may be bullshit but

it keeps folks going, kind of like candy.

One day when you're dead if there are still days

when you're dead, surely there are for those folks

still alive, Gabriel will blow his horn

or trumpet though if it was a big trom

-bone that would be righteous but anyway

when that happens any dead souls in grave

-yards will bust up through their coffin lids

and soil and turf and meet up with Jesus in

the sky, is that the Rapture, I'll take my

umbrella if I'm still alive on Earth

but anyway then I guess the Earth explodes

or Jesus makes Paradise down here or

whatever's in the Good Book that's supposed

to happen does or is it that the dead

live again? It sounds better than Star Trek.

Gale Acuff has had hundreds of poems published in a dozen countries and has authored three books of poetry