print previewback C.L. O’DELL
Heaven
for A. Sexton
Given the chance to finally sleep, we dethrone it.
So much kneeling, so much singing and too little
of it, in order to rouse again into some blotto glare
where blood seems to have, remained living,
the heart in a paper bag with trust and a rose thorn,
the luggage of memory tied to our skinny wrists,
fuming on sentiment, all of those gravities
that dragged us, at times, by the hair, the tongue,
at least somewhere, like doubt, now touchable,
shaped, however we dreamed them to be, joy:
a sparrow, but not the kind I knew that could fall—
swimming in a silver lake without temperature,
breathing in an air with no weather sewn through,
and the pain, my eldest anchor yet, gone, shutting
my eyes only if I’m allowed to. 
