The Zones of Paradise

HERE & YONDER

HERE &YONDER On Jordan’s stormy banks I stand, And cast a wishful eye— My son’s hoping for a swank heaven engineered on clouds—a Comfort & Joy Inn where all the good go ever-aftering. We’ll each get our own turquoise room with a view (assigned on a first-dead, first-served basis), but we’ll gather for banquets of milkshakes and fries, by fountains filled with root beer, rejoicing in the holy ban on broccoli, the everlasting paucity of prunes. My daughter is pragmatic and fourteen. Her paradise? I can well imagine what she imagines; that’s why I try to keep her stalled outside the pearly gates. I know that brand of milk and honey. I know what waits beyond the first threshold of touch. An angel’s plastered on her shut-tight door: Johnny Depp, twice her age and naked from the waist up. Beneath his steady eyes that lock with mine, I leave my offerings, Jane Austens and massiveTolstoys, speed bumps made out of hot-blooded moralists— though I’ll admit that in my time I skimmed those plots, dog-eared the passions, took the ardent shortcut.  I’d still know that old heart anywhere—hesitant, hurried, half Zeno, half Zorro, and bound for every storm this side of Jordan. Look: outside my window, an unpredicted bliss of blue soars above the autumn baritones. Yet here I am, stuck inside one-woman’s-worth-of-weather, making meanings out of molehills, coaxing tight-lipped verses to eke out what they cannot know— how far to trust the cobalt happiness that waits beyond these panicked clouds.  ...