A Poem by Gale Acuff

Volare

 

One day I'll go see God, Miss Hooker says.

She should know--she's my Sunday School teacher.

She means when I'm dead, a long time from now

I hope. I'm only 10, she's 25,

so she'll get there sooner, by fifteen years

unless something bad happens to either

of us and we don't die of natural

old age, some accident that kills her or

me, or maybe even both of us. Sure,

God is good and His mercy endureth

forever and all that but I don't want

to die at all, not even if it means

 

I'd live forever, my soul that is--I

like my body, too, but Miss Hooker says

that there's no room for it in Heaven and

besides I'll get an all-new one but it

won't be like my body here, it will be

no thicker than a soul, I guess. I'll be

like a ghost, kind of invisible and

without blond hair and green eyes and freckles.

Well, actually they're hazel, my eyes

I mean. I don't mind living forever

as long as it's on earth, the only place

I've ever known, for as long as I can

remember. Who knows where I was before

 

--maybe Heaven again. If so, I've lost

my memory, or maybe I wasn't

anything before I was born. I asked

Father and Mother again at supper

last night and Mother said, That's a good one,

and Father said, Not that one now--eat your

beans, which means that he doesn't know, either.

I don't really know how babies get here

but somehow my folks are responsible

for me but they're not talking. Miss Hooker

probably knows but I doubt she'll tell me

anything that isn't in the Bible

 

and I'll bet that's not. In Sunday School this

morning we sang "Onward, Christian Soldiers,"

a number about soldiers without guns

and who won't kill so they don't stand much chance

in battle, poor guys, unless God helps them

and Jesus and the Holy Ghost pitch in.

Then we said the Lord's Prayer and went home.

I could've been killed crossing the highway

to our house. Miss Hooker could've gotten

smashed to smithereens by a Red Ball van

as she was driving her Volare home.

Down here I hope that didn't happen but

if it did then up there, in Heaven, she's

happy, I hope. And to complicate things

 

unless I cut down on my sinning then

I'll go to Hell, she says, and be living

forever but eternally condemned

and tortured endlessly by Satan, which

sounds mighty rough but not much different

from school, just more fiery flames maybe.

So Heaven's probably the place to be

at least until after I graduate

and won't get picked on or flunk quizzes or

throw up my lunch during recess or girls

won't laugh when I tell them they're beautiful

or I lose my milk-and-cookie money

 

or fall asleep during history class

and get licked in exchange for one short dream

or get caught thumbing through Deadman in class.

I'd like to live forever but not long.

Grandpa's 92. Sometimes he funks out

--I can't remember shit, he moans. I wish

I was dead. So I tell him, Believe me,

it's not what folks make it out to be, like

I'm dead myself and here to tell him. Then

he remembers who I am, and tells me.

 

 

 

 Gale Acuff has had poetry published in Ascent, Ohio Journal, Descant, Adirondack Review, Ottawa Arts Review, Worcester Review, Maryland Poetry Review, Florida Review, South Carolina Review, Arkansas Review, Carolina Quarterly, Poem, South Dakota Review, Santa Barbara Review, Sequential Art Narrative in Education, and many other journals. He has authored three books of poetry: Buffalo Nickel (BrickHouse Press, 2004), The Weight of the World (BrickHouse, 2006), and The Story of My Lives (BrickHouse, 2008).

Gale has taught university English in the US, China, and the Palestinian West Bank.