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HEAVEN
I never asked for a guided tour.
It would cost too much. An arm and a leg –
no, two of each. Both lungs,
the sweet iambic lilt of breath and pulse.
There would be fine print
I couldn’t understand. Everything
becomes a contract – more like
Hell. I shredded the offer
and walked outside,
where sheep lay under the live-oak,
meditating their cud. Grass
grew without commandment, a phoebe
sang from a post. And Sun
was turning everything into morning.
I knew it wasn’t everlasting.
But it was just about
all my mind could take in
of Heaven.
Taylor Graham is a volunteer search-and-rescue dog handler in the Sierra Nevada.
She’s included in the anthology California Poetry: From the Gold Rush to the Present
(Santa Clara University, 2004). Her book The Downstairs Dance Floor (Texas Review Press, 2006)
was awarded the Robert Phillips Poetry Chapbook Prize, and she’s a finalist in this year’s Poets
& Writers’ California Writers Exchange. Her newest book – Walking with Elihu: poems on Elihu Burritt,
the Learned Blacksmith – is available on Amazon.
Email: Taylor Graham
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