In Heaven the clothes lines stretch
through fields of wheat,
and flocks of children weave
between the sheets snapping, tumbling
like a secret river.

Chasing a spotless soccer ball,
the children pound the earth
with their bare feet. Turning
the soil with dirty soles,
the boy in the lead kicks, stumbles,

and around him falls a shirt. The smell
of his sweat rises with the linen breeze,
that shifts and devours
the shafts of yellow wheat.

The sun is always burning; the street lights
don't turn off or on. The children
go on playing, no one calls them home.
They don't sneak back to their beds, and wait
for the goodnight kiss,
stifling their breath to look asleep.