We are approaching
the day of reckoning, the day
when the souls are sorted,
when they are divided,
when children learn their fathers are bound
for some other place
they cannot go—
and until then, billions of souls are waiting,
frozen in their dying-places, invisibly littering
the streets, loitering in the hospital beds,
sprinkled thinly on the wooded hillsides.
In public swimming pools
there are floating souls.
On every highway there are souls
of truckers, with their hands
frightfully-frozen to absent steering wheels,
with frightened knotted expressions,
worried about the children and families in cars—
cars bizarrely recycled into beer cans.
There are tribal souls, mountain-man souls,
hills carpeted with the souls of soldiers.
Krakatau souls are frozen like sprinters.
They are everywhere.
Somewhere, frozen,
your great grandmother reclines,
your great great aunt is covering her terrorized eyes,
your distant cousin is shielding a child with his body
and now, even in these recent moments,
people all over the world are dying,
becoming paralytic—they join
those multitudes of other souls who linger,
they wait for the day of reckoning,
they wait to be rewarded,
they wait to be free—to stir again
and someday, for those unfortunate bastards
who will be sorted into hell,
the frozen years will become
the years they long to return to.