Imagine my surprise
when I found myself in heaven
            
not some faux representation,
some nirvana-come-lately,
but the real deal, angels and all
 
and yes, the Devil was there, implied
though not showing his face.
 
There wasn’t much in the way of faces 
but holy-moley there were clothes.
 
The demon tracking me was quite a dresser
although he wasn’t exactly a demon,
more a guy in search of a little love
which he wasn’t getting from me.
 
I understood there were choices
just like when skin and bones
defined us,
 
that I could embrace darkness or light
or even both, that I was strong enough 
to let him wrap his suede-jacket arms 
with their feather-like tassels
around me 
 
and it wouldn’t mean 
I’d picked hell.
 
In fact there wasn’t really hell
unless we chose to make one,
obstinately turning away from joy
just like we did on earth.
 
What surprised me most
was that I was still me,
 
that the traits engraved in life
held on in death. That
 
the ones I loved were there
even if I couldn’t see them clearly.
 
In fact, I could invite them in
for tea, my mother and three sisters
 
who by then were also dead, I
could make cups of hot peppermint
for us, in a room with soft chairs and small tables,
no walls but the cosmos, the soft light of stars.
 
I could call up the man I’d married once
wherever in the Afterlife he was
still resolutely choosing pain,
 
even for him there was a cozy chair,
a cup of herb,
the chance to decide differently.
 
A sort of golden being 
let me know these things
 
obliquely, showing more than telling
like any decent maker ought to do,
 
not God exactly but His agent.
 
An embrace was offered there, too,
but I turned it down.
 
Once a reporter, always a reporter,
you never lose that feeling you should 
stay detached, and I was still new,
still looking around.
 
When he heard I’d turned away from light’s caress,
the stunned look on the non-face of the dark one
told me I’d rejected something special,
a pleasure so intense no sane soul would say No,
 
that the radiant feathers of the angel,
the pulsing body of the angel, 
are the closest thing to heaven
you can get in paradise,
 
there is a flight of golden stairs
and the way up lies through Yes.