Almost Heaven

I use to imagine Heaven
as a Get-out-of-Earth-Free card
in which my seventy-times-seven
is forgotten inside a pardon

And the days between gardens forever disappear
Every blighted moment, sullied by sin,
Stained and sore from grief and fear
In a twinkling, erased from the recollection of men.

Somehow sloughing off the mud and drudge
Of human epochs, human decisions,
Never again to acknowledge
Our blinded imprecisions

All the days of man, the way of all flesh,
Consumed by fog and night
The mortal moments threshed,
Discarded, ever out of sight-

But He isn’t like that, is He?
He redeems the time, each breath unseen
Inhabits our deepest miseries
Collecting the in-betweens

Beauty from ashes, all things worked together,
Let nothing be wasted.
Maybe we aren’t completely severed
From the bitter days we’ve tasted

Maybe we get to remember instead
the stories we’re now too blind to tell:
Recalling only the heaven from the lives we’ve led,
Forever unstained by our hells.