The Afterlife

While you are preparing for sleep, brushing your teeth,or riffling through a magazine in bed,the dead of the day are setting out on their journey. They’re moving off in all imaginable directions,each according to his own private belief,and this is the secret that silent Lazarus would not reveal:that everyone is right, as it turns out.you go to the place you always thought you would go,The place you kept lit in an alcove in your head. Some are being shot into a funnel of flashing colorsinto a zone of light, white as a January sun.Others are standing naked before a forbidding judge who sitswith a golden ladder on one side, a coal chute on the other. Some have already joined the celestial choirand are singing as if they have been doing this forever,while the less inventive find themselves stuckin a big air conditioned room full of food and chorus girls. Some are approaching the apartment of the female God,a woman in her forties with short wiry hairand glasses hanging from her neck by a string.With one eye she regards the dead through a hole in her door. There are those who are squeezing into the bodiesof animals–eagles and leopards–and one trying onthe skin of a monkey like a tight suit,ready to begin another life in a more simple key, while others float off into some benign vagueness,little units of energy heading for the ultimate elsewhere. There are even a few classicists being led to an underworldby a mythological creature with a beard and hooves.He will bring them to the mouth of the furious caveguarded over by Edith Hamilton and her three-headed dog. The rest just lie on their backs in their coffinswishing they could return so they could learn Italianor see the pyramids, or play some golf in a light rain.They wish they could wake in the morning like youand stand at a window examining the winter trees,every branch traced with the ghost writing of snow. (And some just smile, forever on) - Billy Collins