Tag: ecstasy

WORDS LIKE LIGHT 

Friday, August 27, 2021

HEAVEN

            When I was a boy, I thought of heaven as a specific place somewhere above the sky, a place of flawless happiness that could be entered, with luck, only after death. Now, though, in these more discerning senior years, I see that heaven is always present, a place of boundless peace and prosperity, available to me in every moment. Paradise is right here and right now – always. Wherever I am, contentment quietly awaits me. My seemingly small life, supposedly separate from all other lives, is actually an inseparable and special part of a seamless miracle called ‘life’, a miracle that unfolds with precision and perfection each moment. Ecstasy can come from simply standing still and listening and seeing, and euphoria will always follow me if I just carefully follow the disclosing of daily marvels. I don’t have to die to reach heaven. It always – always – holds out its open doors in welcome, even as I sit at my desk at 4:56 a.m. and my elderly, lovely hands tap out these words on the keyboard.   

HEAVEN

Heaven is harmony.
Heaven is what you get 
when you hold a pencil,
or a breath of air, 
or a person.
It is what you see when the sun 
settles on the grass beside you.
It is just a streetlight flashing,
or a strong hand holding yours. 
Heaven comes to you
when you call it,
and then you can carry it 
in your heart to others.