My Heavens Poem by John Allen Richter

I don't want to be late, when it comes to entering Heaven, Metaphor.

Vey light, musical, charming, joyful!

As long as you keep the eager anticipation alive and whistle a happy tune while you share you delight with life with everyone who smiles with you as you run along, your life will be wonderful. But you will not tarry long anywhere as your adventurous spirit will always call you to go forward again - and I shall wave you kisses as you speed on in a race against time itself to find the next magic thing in your path! enjoyed this poem with its wonderful, whimsical description summarising your whole life - a dream you are creating yourself.

This poem is an absolute delight! It is has so many qualities that make it so: a clever premise, which is developed with further cleverness; a varied tone, always one of respect for religious belief, but also a confidence that things have not been set rigidly, there's wiggle room for individuality, namely, your slow-poke progress to heaven; and there is a basic irony here which serves as a lesson in faith, by slowing down and taking all these side trips, you are paying homage to God's Creation, showing us how beautiful and wonderful it is, and by extension how beautiful and wonderful He must be! This is a far more convincing defense of religious truth than the FIRE AND BRIMSTONE approach which uses fear to compel compliance. You invite compliance through humor, joy and sheer pleasure. Copies of this should be sent to ministers/priests before they write their Lenten sermons! It's truly religion as the Good News.

Hi John the message boxes are NOT working. I just lost my response to your generous comment on my commentary on several of your poems. Only the new system of SUBMIT w/out numbers is working. Go figure. I cannot duplicate everything I wrote in this space so let me summarize. I appreciate your appreciation. These critical reactions are as important to me as my own poems, but when someone responds with such gratitude as you have, it makes me feel proud that I can offer the support of a sympathetic reading of your poem. There is a great circle here, which begins with the original poem, continues with a reader's appreciation of it and his response to it, which then inspires the poet to do more creative work. I can't write my comments quickly, I have to live with a poem until it opens up to me. But that opening up is worth the patience. And your poems invite this attention and sympathetic reading.