Friday, June 16, 2023

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.




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