Knowing my father’s soon to die, I
dreamt of Heaven, a wide deck
suspended over a highway. I was
checking it out as a care facility—
the chairs and chaise lounges rickety
things, woven plastic straps
lashed to aluminum tubing.
There were areas out of the glare,
under corrugated green fiberglass
awnings up on wrought-iron struts.
And the dead all about were milling
in variable states of haze,
in tennis outfits, bathing suits.
Where were the courts, the pools?
No conversation—only the drone
of the road below. Nothing new
to learn from that real-world song. I left
for the parking garage. Could I tell
my father about this place? Would I
want him to know, or just let him
see for himself when it’s time?
About Jed Myers
Jed Myers is a Philadelphian living in Seattle. His poems have appeared in Prairie Schooner, Nimrod International Journal, Golden Handcuffs Review, qarrtsiluni, Atlanta Review, Quiddity, The Monarch Review, Palooka, Fugue, The Journal of the American Medical Association, The Rose Alley Press anthology Many Trails to the Summit, and elsewhere. He hosts the long-running open-mic cabaret NorthEndForum and sets poetry to music in the ensemble Band of Poets.
