The Heaven Of Atheists (An Echo Of James Dickey’s “the Heaven Of Animals”) Poem by Scott Alten

Here they are. The cynical eyes open.
If they have lived in a city
It is a city.
If they have lived in the suburbs
It is lawns manicured
Beneath their shoes, endlessly.

Believing not in souls, they have come,
Regardless, beneath their knowing.
Their scrutiny wholly blossoms.
And they awaken.
The cynical eyes open.

To teach them, the terrain manifests,
Outshining, amazingly
Outshining what is expected:
The richest reincarnation,
The deepest abyss.

For some of them
It could not be the place
It is, without thought.
They contemplate, as they have done,
But with argument and debate made perfect,

More scientific than could be remembered
They pontificate more methodically
And sit at the feet of sages,
And their logic
Upon the weak minds of those detractors

May seem endless,
In their logical, methodical analysis,
And they who are believers
Know this is their afterlife,
Their Nirvana: to listen

With such divine patience
To those who speak down to them,
And to have no doubt,
Only pity, understanding.
Relenting themselves without confusion.

At the cyclic center,
They listen, they hear
The godless babble.
They hear, they are brow beaten,
They believe, they are born again.