One day when I’m dead I’ll be all over
with except for memory if that counts
and the life to come which I’ve come to then
and if there’s a third way I’m not so sure
that I know it but maybe I’ll find out
when finding out’s too late, it’s right funny
how that works, at least from life’s side and if
not from the other then I expect to
know if one can know anything, I know
I can’t be alive forever, enjoy
good and avoid bad even as I make
bad happen, somehow I just can’t help it
and if there’s such as thing as sin that’s it
though I should know more when I’m no longer
but one day when I’m dead I won’t be, won’t
be dead I mean, will just begin to live
the life to come, the life-in-death that life
seems meant to be and my only problem
is that I can’t let others know, others
still alive I mean, what they can expect,
at least nobody’s told me, I mean not
from their own experience – at church and
Sunday School I must trust God and Jesus
and the Holy Ghost and the Bible and
Preacher and Miss Hooker, my Sunday School
teacher, but damned if that’s so, I’d rather
trust myself or meet up with dead-live folks
I want to know, one day my parents and
friends and folks I’ve heard of but not yet met,
including, say, me. I scare me to death.
By Gale Acuff
