“Heaven is a place where nothing ever happens.” -Talking Heads

But does perfectly pitched singing count 
as nothing, no hours and hours 

of Monday night choir practice 
in the damp basement of St. John’s, 

where Mrs. McKinney screeched her way 
to high C, where the Messiah was never 

an option, but neither were electric 
anything: guitars, drums, portable keyboards

appearing miraculously beside the altar. No,
none of that—in this new location, 

just the automatic symphony of seraphim 
with impeccable timing, expertly directing 

the already on-key and smiling 
now immortal mortals easily channeling 

their praise into song in this Carnegie Hall 
of the afterlife where the sonorous 

could never be part of the same 
score as boring, right? When 

my dance-band piano-playing father 
died, my mother read everything 

on Paradise, its crescendo of happiness, 
its chorus of delight in the acoustically

correct expanse of heavenly mansions, 
but never—through the long silent grief

of our Midwestern home—did she hit Play, 
though we did, my father’s recorded 

boogie-woogie bouncing off the man-
made walls and through our patched roof, 

exuberant enough for exaltation,
for full-throated eternity, beautifully

busy with be-bop and dance,
improv and jive.