Viewing Heaven

As I rolled over and read my messages this morning, I saw one from a old bearded man.

Today, if you pray, you may save a moment for Nepal.

Viewing Heaven

*****

If there is a heaven on Earth

For some, it must be a warm glow soaked

Sunday afternoon, without a care

And a hand grasping a grape jelly jar of deep gold bourbon

A scene of rolling hills spread out

And the silence of a Sunday afternoon bourbon

On a hillside in Kentucky.

***

For others, heaven is a tussle of warm cotton sheets

And the snuggle of a cat that has jumped at a flash

Just a few, too few, not many times.

Together laying there in the silent understanding

Of mutual love, with the road

And the roar somewhere far away,

an infinite journey

to take maybe tomorrow,

maybe some other day.

***

Finally

For a few

From the peaks

of dream mountains,

to the ancient temples below,

Heaven fell today.

Amid a linger of incense and flutter of prayer flags

Monks cry.

With those that felt heaven fall, they wander battered streets

To search for the buried and crushed.

Soul spirits that held strong as gunstocks smashed them

Uselessly.

Soul spirits that managed a prayer of peace and love.

Hands clasped in solace at the silence of the world outside

And worn smooth by the simplicity of life.

Today heaven fell not by man and marching toy soldiers,

But heaven came down by a restless surge in the earth.

By a rock, a boulder and power of a restless surge.

They will cry and dig and look tonight for a simple place

To watch the prayer flag flutter and the incense curl burn swirls

And sweeten the air they breathe

And find somehow amid their dusty tears, to be thankful

For the living and the dead.

And maybe heaven tonight will be a sip of water and a spoon of rice.