New Poetry by Gale Acuff

One day when you die you live again is

the story at church and Sunday School so

you never really die though you do but

you live again and forever and it's

real life, the life eternal they tell me

and I'm only ten years old--Hell, I be

-lieve anything, especially if

I don't understand it, ha ha, so what

death means has no meaning because death dies

or all there is is birth and growth and what

seems like death is only life escaping

to the land of the best kind of living,

the Afterlife I guess it is, which lasts

forever and then some and so will I

once I die but don't. I'd pay to see that.

                           

I'll die someday but so will everyone

else, just not at the same time unless we

get wiped out by a comet or atom

bombs all gone off at once and I'm only

ten years old, what should I know about death

but that it's in the future, where it be

-longs? That's what I asked at Sunday School and

my teacher told me that I should be con

-cerned about where my soul will spend Eter

-nity, Heaven or Hell, they're not the same

she says but I said and I still say that

I don't want to die at all and if God

is God then I shouldn't have to but she

just laughed and said Gale, if you don't die then

you'll never have been born. The mouths of babes.

                 

 

One day I'll be done, dead that is, but at

Sunday School they say me nay--I'll live on

in Hell or Heaven and Heaven's better

but Hell they mention first and raise their eye

-brows, I mean our teacher does and I fear

she means that if I dropped dead right there on

the spot Hell's where I'd land and I agree

but after class I asked her why Jesus

died if there's still a chance that I'll go to

the Bad Place, what's the point of sacrifice

if it doesn't seven save a sinner

and she answered that it's not enough for

Him to die but that I must believe that

He's the Son of God and if I don't then

He died for nothing. That makes me feel good.

- © Gale Acuff 2023

Gale Acuff has had hundreds of poems published in a dozen countries and has authored three books of poetry. He has taught tertiary English courses in the US, PR China, and Palestine.