In the Park

 You have forty-nine days between
death and rebirth if you're a Buddhist.

Even the smallest soul could swim
the English Channel in that time
or climb, like a ten-month-old child,
every step of the Washington Monument
to travel across, up, down, over or through
--you won't know till you get there which to do.


He laid on me for a few seconds
said Roscoe Black, who lived to tell
about his skirmish with a grizzly bear
in Glacier Park.
He laid on me not doing anything.
I could feel his heart
beating against my heart.

Never mind lie and lay, the whole world
confuses them.
For Roscoe Black you might say
all forty-nine days flew by.


I was raised on the Old Testament.

In it God talks to Moses, Noah, 
Samuel, and they answer.

People confer with angels.
Certain
animals converse with humans.

It's a simple world, full of crossovers.

Heaven's an airy Somewhere, and God
has a nasty temper when provoked,
but if there's a Hell, little is made of it.

No longtailed Devil, no eternal fire,

and no choosing what to come back as.

When the grizzly bear appears, he lies/lays down
on atheist and zealot.
In the pitch-dark
each of us waits for him in Glacier Park.

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