As in Stories It Is

“He has not passed, he is not gone, he is not lost: he is dead.”

Have you ever considered

What even one miracle,

One honest resurrection,

One impossible person,

One actual immortal

Would do to the world, would mean?

You know a number of tales,

May well have been encouraged 

In your childhood to believe

In one or a few of them,

May fervently believe still. 

But you can’t produce a soul,

A tangible Lazarus,

A demonstrable person,

The blues walking like a man.

You can’t and you know you can’t.

If you could (or when you can)

The world would break (or it will).

Until then, you can only,

We can only, imagine.

Imagination is weak,

Rebrewed tea, the dog’s breakfast

Of recollection. It fails,

In most cases, to capture

The least of the deep weirdness

That would attend the rebirth

Of a sentient being

For no natural reason,

Flouting the elemental

Parameters of physics

All other lives depend on,

Not subject to the trade-offs

Death wrings from biology.

And yet we tell our stories

As if immortality 

Was something we knew about,

An understood condition,

Perfectly ordinary,

Dull, as in stories it is.