And take also from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever.—Genesis 3:22
Why seek ye the living among the dead?—Luke 24:5

He asked me, “Why seek ye the living among the dead?”
I couldn’t answer with a blue collar foot-in-my-mouth and no voice in my head.
Dad’s Adam’s apple swallowing…a necktie beneath his black preacher’s gown.
Son of Achilles—me and my heel falling through a bottomless down.
No sacred tongue…Hebrew, Latin, or even Achilles’mother-love Greek.
My neck-throat was foot-tied. I couldn’t walk or speak.
Dad’s dead since 1981…yet his God-fearing voice…
No need to seek the living among the dead—life is the choice.

Mother’s eyes saw Death tailspinning me in his parallax view.
In 1968 hearing her nothingness, I waved goodbye—what else could I do?
I was catapaulting head-over-heels—screaming…”ap—prehen—s—ion.”
Then astronauts walking on a 1969 moon—apotheosis or condescension?
“Creator you can kiss my foot,” said Everyman.
God replied, “Creature, eat your dead-father-totem, forget the Tree of Life Plan.”

Looking at my sockless heel, his collarless throat swallowed and said, “Good deal.”
Suspended animation, time-feeling him as father-with-me love I could really feel.
His no collar neck and feet were real, not like clay, I could taste his salty sweat.
God’s tree-of-life promise? Death’s gift if I take the bet?

Four year-old me, 1945. Sunday School every Sunday—I had to go.
Thy will be done…then forty years later, sucking John Doe’s eighty-year old toe.
Sunday afternoons, Dad singing Old Dan Tucker…died with a toothache in his heel.
Religion, myth or history, my parallax view alone—to touch his feel.

The benediction? A mixed blessing behind memory’s closet door.
As Ever, never Love…he often wrote to say. My last words to him, “Forever more.”
Still, a thirty year free-fall to white collar hell, and no handbasket for me to land.
Now, sucking old John’s naked toe-foot, I hold time—wrist-stitched in my left hand