Poetry Corner: At the Gates of Heaven…by Chuck Peek

At the Gates of Heaven, Facing the Crowds, Searching Desperately for the Ways to Measure Grace on Judgment Day

once if memory served
     there was a table of equivalencies
                    but now no one can seem to

lay their hands on it
               so possibly the remembering will have to do

     will (to get down to business) count the dirt under Sister Gardener’s nails
               as a novena

o.k., possibly a no brainer (unless you spoke with her Superior)

but then we can imagine the high pitched sound
     off the amped guitar chording hopes and losses

is surely godspeeding something
     no matter at 36,000 feet or a ground zero

what then the wounded tongue of
          the woman at the clinic,
     bitten repeatedly
        each time she’s accused
                       of killing babies

or the witness’s go-to-hell refusal to testify against his friends
                while the cameras flash
     his inquisitor’s photo for mass consumption

                  another song you could write, another hell to pay

was there anything in the book for those who
          stand (add the usual prepositions: up or with or by)

               can we count the stretching of the figures fading on the cave’s walls

must we protract the perimeters of the circles
                               of hell
                  how far do the outstretched arms reach

Chuck Peek
Kearney, Nebraska / November 6, 2014