Caleb Perry Murdock

Heaven Waits

“I tried my best” — a useless thing to say.
That’s what schoolboys say when they fail a test.
This is my life at stake; I’m at its end.
I hope to meet God soon and find my rest.

Whether God wants me is another thing.
I was never sure if He was or wasn’t.
Such meager faith might not be rewarded.
I’ll try not to blame Him if He doesn’t.

Perhaps He’ll punt me to the other guy
with This one’s for you on a Post-It note.
I’m pretty fat; they could put me on a spit
and make a meal of me for the evil folk.

If heaven turns out to be a void, I don’t
know what I’ll do.  No form, no legs, no voice;
no complaint window to march to; no court
to file a demand for a better choice.    

The Buddha is the one I always followed;
he was poor, kind, skinny and seemingly wise.
He said we live a thousand times. Would that
be heaven or purgatory in disguise?

No one knows what we are doing here,
or why our lives collapse into a mess.
God — bless Him — isn’t about to tell us,
so all that I can say is, “I tried my best.”

Caleb Perry Murdock was born in 1950 and lives in Rhode Island. He spent most of his life as a word-processing operator for law firms. He has written poetry since his twenties, but he didn’t lose his chronic writer’s block until his late sixties. He is now writing up a storm to make up for lost time.