THE AFTERLIFE
by Billy Collins

They’re moving off in all imaginable directions,
each according to his own private belief,
and this is the secret that silent Lazarus would not reveal:
that everyone is right, as it turns out.
you go to the place you always thought you would go,
the place you kept lit in an alcove in your head.

Some are being shot into a funnel of flashing colors
into a zone of light, white as a January sun.
Others are standing naked before a forbidding judge who sits
with a golden ladder on one side, a coal chute on the other.

Some have already joined the celestial choir
and are singing as if they have been doing this forever,
while the less inventive find themselves stuck
in a big air conditioned room full of food and chorus girls.

Some are approaching the apartment of the female God,
a woman in her forties with short wiry hair
and glasses hanging from her neck by a string.
With one eye she regards the dead through a hole in her door.

There are those who are squeezing into the bodies
of animals–eagles and leopards–and one trying on
the skin of a monkey like a tight suit,
ready to begin another life in a more simple key,

while others float off into some benign vagueness,
little units of energy heading for the ultimate elsewhere.

There are even a few classicists being led to an underworld
by a mythological creature with a beard and hooves.
He will bring them to the mouth of the furious cave
guarded over by Edith Hamilton and her three-headed dog.

The rest just lie on their backs in their coffins
wishing they could return so they could learn Italian
or see the pyramids, or play some golf in a light rain.
They wish they could wake in the morning like you
and stand at a window examining the winter trees,
every branch traced with the ghost writing of snow.

From QUESTIONS ABOUT ANGELS

This Billy Collins poem came through my Facebook news feed just a little while after my mother’s assisted living called to tell me my mother went to the hospital with blood pressure of 220.

“Is this an omen?” I thought. It is happening weekly. She calls an ambulance and off she goes with sky high pressure teetering on a stroke.
And she always returns, soon to be 95 years old, with her self intact, her sense of humor, her interest in world events and in reading up in alternative medicine and natural healing.

At this age anything is possible or impossible, any second or nanosecond can turn on a dime. We are here, we are not.

We are. And while we are we hope for good health and longevity if it suits us, if we are intact.

So while I post this poem and waver as to whether I should call the hospital, I hear a song from sixth grade playing in the background at PS 61, in 1959. “La Plume de Ma Tante.” I guess my memories are taking over so I don’t have to think to much or too long in any direction, just to hope it is a happy new year.