Heaven Came Knocking
Heaven came knocking at your front door while you were out trying to hunt her down. The message left for you was voiced with a rolling of eyes and clicking of tongue, “You’ll never find me there. I’m sorry to have missed you.” Now she’s gone off again, settling somewhere between here and everywhere, to build her nest, beat her drum, waiting, waiting, waiting for some sorry soul to come looking, so she can go knocking at a home that’s been emptied in search of some place warm and dry, another eye roll from our dear friend.
She told me she passes by at least twice a day, in highway traffic and check out lines, and she said you never recognize, or you’ve forgotten, or you’re searching with that hunger that blinds and bars all senses of clarity and honest vision.
She is patient, will go on waiting, while we continue hurrying toward the imagined finish line where we are certain she will be. We pull the future down faster like thick blinds blocking light so we can sit around our synthetic suns. Left foot, right foot, left foot, right, we march, we clear cut, we dry it up. We do our best to corner her, rid her of her hiding places and all the while she watches us flail and falter, perched upon the robbin’s wing, burrowed in the ant hill, summoning storm clouds just for fun.
Heaven came knocking at your front door while you were out trying to hunt her down. The message left was voiced with a rolling of eyes and clicking of tongue, “You’ll never find me there. Look up. Make faces in the bathroom mirror. Find a hand to hold and stretch those moments as long as they can go. What’s the rush? Why are you trying to leave me all the time? Directly behind you is my favorite place to hide. I’ll admit, I was the one who poked a hole in your favorite sweater. Anyways, I’m sorry to have missed you.”
And I swore I heard her singing as she wandered off down the road. A song about an unseeing man, who thought his eyes were his hands and broke everything in his searching, called in knowledge, called it advancing, called in catching on. And in the setting sun she had tears in her eyes and she began to beat her drum.
She’ll be back, and you’ll be away, and so on, as it goes. But maybe your children, or theirs, will learn the art of standing still. Maybe they’ll read her old letters, stuffed in your dresser drawer. Maybe they’ll recognize her from sketches drawn from memory, catching her on the street somewhere between here and everywhere, if only for a moment, just long enough to know, just long enough to remember.