Heaven

by Michael Hettich

You notice the crow, way up in the sky, 
just a dab of paint. Nothing moves except your mind.

It’s like waiting for your name to be called at last
when you can’t quite remember who you are.

Once you took a train to a town full of people 
who told you things you already knew. 
They asked you to stay there, to disappear with them
like a late-night list of resolutions

or places to travel where no one would ever 
know you again--so you might 
get lost to the air you moved through, lost 
to the light that woke you, the light that allows you 
to see what you know, and almost nothing 

of what might be there. It’s like thanking the boulders 
for staying so heavy and solid, like trying
to sleep when you’re already dreaming, or trying 
to melt like the snow does, to saturate the ground
more gently than the rain ever could.

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Michael Hettich has published a dozen books of poetry, most recently The Mica Mine, which won the 2020 Lena Shull Book Award from the North Carolina Poetry Society and was published in 2021. A "new and selected" volume is forthcoming in 2023. He has published widely in journals, and in a number of anthologies as well.