Heaven without honeysuckles—soft,
golden light—is no kind of place for angels.
Such a flat-fragranced land, a dusty, dry
tumbleweed of a neighborhood seems
more fit for graceless devils. Give me
humid mountains cloaked in kudzu
ribbons, the rattled swell-hush of jar flies
big as blue collar fingers. Give me
lightning bugs hovering their cosmos
just above grass blades at dusk, and a long,
wide road with no signs save a cross and silk
chrysanthemums gripping its guardrail
with rusted wire. If heaven is the last stop
in forever, it had better be Kentucky
caught in the promise of June and July—
its vines heavy with sweet blackberry heads
and eternal honey sips of sunshine.