High Up In The Air Poem by gershon hepner

Like us when on the telephone,
the dead communicate
in order not to be alone,
so children think. How great
to think that high up in the air
there may be hidden places
where those who do not live can share
with us their wraithful spaces,
while life continues in the mind
of those who’re dead far more profound
than mortals can conceive, to bind
the people lying under ground,
with those who’re quick and don’t yet lie
as corpses must lie, in the earth
and, higher than the cloudy sky,
to thoughts give posthumously birth.

On August 12,2004, the day after my mother’s death, my grandson Max who lives in Allentown called Linda in Los Angeles. She recorded the conversation in an e-mail to me:

Max called about Oma. He said, 'I am very sad. Did you know Granny that when people die they are not really dead, they are up in the air. It's how we talk to each other, from Allentown to London to Los Angeles to Israel, without a telephone.”

The Vorlage of this poem, written on 8/18/04 is pasted below. I revised in on the 15th of Tevet,5700, on the Yahrzeit of my father-in-law, Joseph Roer:

Like talking on the telephone
the dead communicate
with one another, not alone,
so children think. How great
to think that high up in the air
there may be hidden places
where those who do not live can share
with us their wraithful spaces,
while life continues in the mind
in ways far more profound
than adults can conceive, to bind
the living to the ground,
and all the quick with dead who lie
not only in the earth
but, higher than the cloudy sky,
the place where thoughts give birth.

8/18/04,1/1/09