Gale Acuff

One day you’re dead and the next you’re alive
is what they teach at church and Sunday School,
it’s called religion, it’s like magic but
without the wand and top hat and cards or
rabbit, what it’s got is faith they tell us
ten-year-olds and sometimes I can buy it
but just as often not and I don’t want
to die and I mean ever but I will
and so must everybody else so no
wonder that folks dream to live again once
they’re kaput and not just live but live like
nobody flesh and blood has lived before.
Wouldn’t it be something, I asked my Sun
-day School teacher, if we die and there’s no
Heaven nor even Hell? Behold, she said.