Third Heaven (Jan 27, 2005)

Sweet friend, I heard your singing clear.
I’m grieved that you disturb me here,
drawn back from paradise depths am I,
where on a lily-bed I lie.
-- 12th century song

I know a man in Christ above
fourteen years ago (whether in
the body, I know not, or out
of the body, I know not: God knoweth),
such a one caught up to
the third heaven. And I know such
a man (....) that he was caught
up into paradise, and heard
secret words, which is not
granted man to utter.
—2 Corinthians 12:2-4

My first heaven was green and
verdurous, grown from my
mother’s voice next to the sea’s,
an embowering uteral which
claimed me young and since
has hinged the worlds between
what embraces yet goes without.
My second heaven came from
whiter realms, descended
in a discerning wave of wind
which blasted my teen years
in some feral pentecost,
tongues of fire which burnt
my supplicating hands to
chalky bone and wedged an
infinite white sea between
the world I know and bliss.
The third heaven was
pure salt blue and washed
the other two away in
one woman’s ecstatic
Yes! -- a sound from which
I woke no longer solitary
or sane, my ears sweetened
and enthralled with
that crashing heaven far
below and behind the
other two. Down in
that drowned abbey
of love’s wildest ache
I was pickled, night
after night down many
years, into the brine-
stained rogue who
only speaks in blue-
angelic brogue, a silky
selkie song full nippled
with the cream of
joy, the narhwhals
nibbed like pens
or penises proud with
all the nouns to pile,
like bones, in the
rumpled bed of abyss
beneath this writing chair.
These words pour freely
from my blue heaven,
words no man may say
in the dry world of days
without washing pale
shores blue. My third
heaven vaults every
verb to harbor you
if only for one night
or the transit of a page.
Perhaps such heaven is
a poor height for gods
and poems to rage, but
then the deeps to me
have always seemed the
greater half of heaven,
like dreams inside the
pillows where we sleep.
My third heaven
borders the first two
everywhere the seem
of us is sweet.