Double or Nothing on Pascal’s Wager (poem)

(by Daniel R. Jones)

[Note: This poem was first published in Altered Reality in December 2016.]

Eleanor, I think
I want to go where you are.

But I worry.
naught but negative feedback
came through the visual metaphors-

Laid out flat-lined across a gurnee in the threshold 
of an elevator, white sheet pulled over your face.
No one asked the nurse on call

“Up or down?”
All personnel know
the morgue is in the basement.

And it sounds silly,
but I’m second-guessing our decision
to forego the cremation in favor of burial-

Am I reaching too much?
Are they called undertakers
for nothing?

Eleanor, I fear the worst…
the age-old question:
heaven or hell?

I want to go where you are
( I think?)

To make matters worse,
my last look at your tombstone
through the rear-view mirror

revealed the words
“Objects in mirror
are closer than they appear.”

Eleanor, am I reaching too much?
Am I reading too much
into this?