Billy Collins
The dead are always looking down
on us, they say,
while we are putting on our shoes
or making a sandwich,
they are looking down through the
glass-bottom boats of heaven
as they row themselves slowly
through eternity
They watch the tops of our heads
moving below on earth,
and when we lie down in a field or
on a couch,
drugged perhaps by the hum of a
warm afternoon,
they think we are looking back at
them,
which makes them lift their oars
and fall silent
and wait, like parents, for us to
close our eyes.
