I’ll never forget the face I saw
Through a portal to heaven — what a sight,
With the lights down low and the radio
In your living room late last night.
Was it God, herself, that I saw
Looking back at me through your eyes?
What a handsome face, never seen before
So familiar, yet such a surprise.
Or was it simply an angel
With the beauty that one might expect,
Lit from within, God’s local rep,
An agent from the hedonist sect?
Her knock on the doors of perception so gentle,
Like the door-to-door Witness she ain’t,
That I let her in without asking
“Was she just from the ‘hood, or a saint?”
The atmosphere was rarefied
The minute she stepped in the door;
‘Til she’d given me her beatific smile
I’d never felt that way before.
Whether god, or saint, or angel,
By then I no longer cared;
I’d have gladly bought her entire stock if
She’d been tryin’ to sell Tupperware.
I was sure she and I’d never spoken before
Except perhaps in a dream,
But I felt like I knew her from long, long ago —
A mote from some childhood sunbeam.
And — in the end — there she was,
Rad’iance melting me to my core
Welcoming me into heaven at last —
Truth be told, I’d been kicked out before.
She waved me toward that red velvet rope
And unfastened it as I approached,
Stepped back and said, “Won’t you please come in?”
‘Fore the subject had even been broached.
There must be some mistake, I thought,
So happy I practically cried,
But the toll of years having waited in line
Whispered, “Better step quickly inside.”
The purest joy recalled or imagined,
Like meeting lost fam’ly and friends,
I know that I’d still have embraced it
Had I thought that this was my end.
But what does one say when one meets God?
Wait, was that an etiquette book?
“As ye reap, so shall ye sow” —
No time left to continue to look.
“So God,” I said, “where you been all my life?
And what gives with the beauty defiled?
All the death and the thieves and the pestilence thing;”
She just looked at me and smiled.
And in that instant all was forgotten
I forgave her for being so long,
Having left me alone in a forsaken desert
With just wine, other women, and song;
For then I knew we’d be one for eternity
— Or six months, whichever came first —
Grateful for only a fifty-year wait
For a drink that could quench such a thirst.
And evermore you and I will have Heaven,
That moment the world was so right
With the lights down low and the radio
In your living room late last night.
With the lights down low and the radio
In your living room late last night.