I had a dream.
I don’t remember most dreams.

I was cleaning the floors of heaven.
It seemed a mixed blessing,
I was in heaven, after all
but I was cleaning the floors.

It was a part time job,
I knew that intuitively.
I don’t mind house cleaning, heaven cleaning.
It’s calm work, kind of Zen.
Are we supposed to think of religions in heaven?

At first I scrubbed on my hands and knees.
The floors are soft in heaven, like golden gym mats.
Then I thought of it, and suddenly I had a swiffer-wet mop,
just like that - and the pad never wore out.

After a while, I had an iPod, and AirPods too.
Then a daiquiri - a banana daiquiri with a pastel rainbow umbrella.
They make rapturous daiquiris in the hereafter - they never run out.
‘Heavenly,’ I thought, snorting out a dizzy laugh.
.
.
Songs for this:
The River of Dreams Billy Joel
If the Lord Wasn't Walking By My Side by Elvis Presley

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Arthur Benjamin Franklin: my Unca Artie, my favorite. A High School football star, known as Red Franklin, he was famous for his dark red hair.  He used to chuck me into deep water at Chrystal Pool to terrify me for 5 seconds, then hoist me onto his broad shoulders.I suspect I was his favorite too.  War came and he had to go.  I cried and cried on the herringbone patterned bricks at the train depot in Kelso. I have a v-mail he sent to my mom, his sister, dated 1942.  He was a belly gunner on the B-17’s that  were flying the area where Rommel was fighting.  He brought my sis and I back little leather suitcases, tooled in wonderful designs by a skilled artist somewhere in the orient. I still have it.  A treasure.

Grover Cleveland Franklin: My suave uncle, joined the Navy in WWII and became a deep sea diver. The kind that wore those heavy suits with the big glass bubble head.  He helped detect and destroy mines around battleships.  In doing that brave work he lost his hearing and came home as a lip reader for most of my childhood. I was always  a bit suspicious because he seemed to read lips so well. He even got written up in the newspaper because he could sing while putting his hands on a phonograph and feeling the vibrations of the music he couldn’t hear. We kids would always try to make loud noise behind him but he never once reacted to it.
Many years later I learned that he confessed that his hearing had gradually came back.  He was a hero nevertheless.

About their names: Both being born in North Carolina, back in the 1920’s it was common practice among the country folk to name sons after famous people.  I also have another distant relative named George Washington Franklin. I love having hillbilly DNA.

I am holding a love
with no destination.
It floods me without warning,
fills me with purpose,
With all the fire of arrival, and nothing waiting on the other side.

No, he is not
waiting at the gate.
He’s nowhere.
And this love,
it’s too vast for my body,
too loud for sleep,
too loyal
to walk away.

This grief,
this relentless, boundless
love was meant to land
in his heart.
Always.
Instead it circles inside me,
wings beating
against bone,
a bird
that can’t find
a place to perch.

I can’t destroy it.
I won’t.
It’s the last thing I have
that still knows
his shape.

But it’s heavy.
It trembles.
It begs for release.
And I am breaking
under the weight
of what cannot be given.

slowly the mountains come out of the blue of morning,
they regain their face
light bathes them in its milk
I hide in the tall grass like a child
this self expands into the clouds behind the trees
an engulfing joy dissolves words into vowels
everything that exists  is wonder, a forgotten state of matter
time confesses a circle
the circle conjures  an earth so wild
the forest stores its prayers inside moss
the sacred hidden in the most profane  flower
an work of art with unknown author, every atom is colourful
I offer my skin as playground for butterflies
they can feel she's not so different from the skin of the earth
some hours are born by the self of rain
I wonder if the wind feels me
like I feel you in blooming nails

I carry your hands like waves breaking on the skin
your eyes get flammable like capsicum on innocent tongue
I have long conversations with this boiling sea
the sea bears the roundness of the moon
the moon reveals its wounds
the wounds shed their skins to feed
an undiscovered earth