Getting to Heaven

Once upon a time there was a moon
in the sea, like the moon in the sky
today. It would open and close
like an eye, and light the traveller's way.
Now it is gone. Its brother pulls
the oceans along, but leads the sailor astray.

Once my brother brought home a stray
kitten, bright-eyed like the moon.
We told him no, but every child pulls
at kittens' tails. Blue-eyed as the sky
it would glare at him in a cat's cool way
and hold itself taut when he came to hold it close.

A Christian lady came as close
as anyone could to bringing every stray
soul in her path to her own righteous way.
They say she tried to convert the moon
and that when she died, her soul went into the sky
and stands there now with a net, and with all her strength she pulls.

The thing I loved in church was the silken bell-pulls.
I couldn't quite reach them, but I came close.
I dreamed of climbing them, through the steeple, to the sky
and up to heaven, a single stray
child of the living among souls pale as the moon.
My brother said noone ever got to heaven that way.

But I never cared. I dreamed anyway.
I'll go wherever my mind pulls.
I want to get past the moon
to see the stars even when I close
my eyes. I walk at night and want to howl with stray
dogs. I want to annoy my neighbors and call to the sky.

I heard that once upon a time the sky
stood empty. The stars had lost their way
and wandered the depths crying like stray
children. In time, the sky pulls
each star back up and holds it close
but the one which could not bear to leave became the moon.

We will all go as the sky pulls
us spinning in its wake. Now, so close,
we reach out and strain for the moon.

copyright Vicka Rael Corey, 1984