There is No Wind in Heaven

From Inklings: Poems Old and New. Sandhill Press, 2001.

There is no wind in heaven. Every leaf,
like every soul, never touches another.
Each greens in its own resplendence.

And there are no dead branches in heaven
combing the air, no moans in the eaves,
no whistling nor’westers in gold gutters.

God, how I’ll miss the wind wherever
I am. I think the dead might like
a breath of it on the edge

of their porcelain souls,
or its strong palm slapped broadly
against their rich complexions.

Children love the wind. In the winter
they bundle up to let it in.
There must be someplace for the dead

where children’s voices color every
extremity of winter, where their vigor
makes mortal every branch, however bare.

I’ve always thought the wind is the sky
come down, but there is no sky in heaven.

Used with the permission of Don Welch

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