AS INTENDED?

[On arrival at The Pearly Gates!]

‘Ah, Johnson’,

The floating attendant beamed,

‘You’re here at last!

Now let me see

Let me peruse my chart

To find

Whether you have matched

Those hopes when you were hatched’.

I watched and scrutinised

The peering and the poring

The snorting and the sighing

And once, just once, a chuckle

Perhaps of disbelief as

I hoped I wouldn’t buckle

Beneath a mounting weight

Of such negative estimate.

‘Well, Johnson, it appears’,

After what seemed like years,

‘That you have so incandescently offended,

Not met that for which you were

So obviously…………. Intended’.

The clustered, powdery books around

Jigged and bucked and turned to grieve

And I, crestfallen, turned to leave.

But as I turned with misted eyes that could not see

I thought I felt a gentle hand enfolding me.