drugged perhaps by the hum of a warm afternoon

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. 

 

[Billy Collins {1941- } 'The Dead', from Stopping for Death: poems of death and loss]