What has Ursula Hazelwood Hunt Blanton

been up to in Heaven all this time?

 

Shelling beans, watching soaps,

cackling among gossiping seraphs and cherubim?

 

I’d like to think so, along with her

sisters, Ruby and Pearl, up there

over yonder in Heaven’s Baptist wing

doing what they loved most doing

but without life’s worries

gnawing away at the back of their heads.

 

And what about their husbands,

where are they? Certainly, not with them,

but outside behind some cloudy bank

sneaking a drink, enjoying the fiddle music

of some winged, yodeling hillbilly gone to his reward.

 

Mama’s up there now as well,

maybe with daddy, his restlessness abated.

Curled up on a sofa, they smoke cigarettes

that can’t kill them, chuckling

about how, after all, it all turned out all right.