Infection

The Jesus Infection
by Maxine Kumin

Jesus is with me
on the Blue Grass Parkway going eastbound.
He is with me
on the old Harrodsburg Road coming home.
I am listening
to country gospel music
in the borrowed Subaru.
The gas pedal
and the words
leap to the music.
O throw out the lifeline!
Someone is drifting away.
Flags fly up in my mind
without my knowing
where they’ve been lying furled
and I am happy
living in the sunlight
where Jesus is near.
A man is driving his polled Herefords
across the gleanings of a cornfield
while I am bound for the kingdom of the free.
At the little trestle bridge that has no railing
I see that I won’t have to cross Jordan alone.
Signposts every mile exhort me
to Get Right With God
and I move over.
There’s a neon message blazing
at the crossroad
catty-corner to the Burger Queen:
Ye Come With Me.
It is well with my soul, Jesus?
It sounds so easy
to be happy after the sunrise,
to be washed in the crimson flood.
Now I am tailgating
and I read a bumper sticker
on a Ford truck full of Poland Chinas.
It says: Honk If You Know Jesus
and I do it.
My sound blats out for miles
behind the pigsqueal
and it’s catching in the front end,
in the axle,
in the universal joint,
this rich contagion.
We are going down the valley on a hairpin turn,
the swine and me, we’re breakneck in
we’re leaning on
the everlasting arms.
 
“The Jesus Infection” by Maxine Kumin from Selected Poems: 1960-1990. W. W. Norton © 1997.

Definition #143 (Jeanne from Queens #15) Heaven

Quenby’s Backyard Baptism 1975

The Invention of Heaven

by Dean Young

The mind becomes a field of snow
but then the snow melts and dandelions
blink on and you can walk through them,
your trousers plastered with dew.
They’re all waiting for you but first
here’s a booth where you can win

a peacock feather for bursting a balloon,
a man in huge stripes shouting about
a boy who is half swan, the biggest
pig in the world. Then you will pass
tractors pulling other tractors,
trees snagged with bright wrappers

and then you will come to a river
and then you will wash your face.

“The Invention of Heaven” by Dean Young, from First Course in Turbulence. © University of Pittsburgh Press, 1999. Reprinted with permission of the author.

Heaven

Pieces of Heaven

Little corners like this, pieces of Heaven
left lying around, can be picked up and saved.
People won’t even see that you have them,
they are so light and easy to hide.

Later in the day you can act like the others.
You can shake your head. You can frown.

(William Stafford in The Way It Is)

Zealot

Cosmic being
created unique
God’s daughter
life-giving spirit.

created unique
born of heaven
mystical child.

God’s daughter
heir with Christ
divine child.

life-giving spirit
in death, eternity
and judgement.

This is Paul’s description of Christ and his brothers and sisters as described by Reza Aslan in his book:The Zealot.

A Fisherman in Heaven

The Rod
The Moon
The Deep

Rod points aft, to moon:
throws itself on sea that waves
on path to heaven!

Tongue Twister #25 Glory

Glory
A
Wonders
A
Miracles
A
Plenty

Failure
Us
Weakness
Us
Graceless
A
Plenty

Hidden
A
Glory
A-
Plause
A
Heaven

Glory
A
God’s:
A-
nothers:
not
ours.

not ours