We have suffered the loss and slow dying of friends and relatives in the last few months. Death has been smoking up our life like a prairie fire, inching close before retreating before the cool breath of life.
It’s easy to personify Death, this non-life, because it seems to reach in and snatch away the breath of those we love, leading them away. Some go in a flash, some inch away from us neuron by neuron, word by word. And if the fire hasn’t burned our own flesh, we need only glimpse the news from Gaza, Israel, Syria, Ukraine—you name the place.
The fire taunts us to run, to hide, erase it from our consciousness. But we can also speak into it, sing out of it, and dance, paint, and play all around it. In poetry there is mourning as well as praise, gratitude as well as pain, for it is words composed to fill the darkness beyond words, the Light beyond the Word.
So I share a couple of poems today through which I have tried to see through the smoke, discern the cooling water, walk into the light. These are walking sticks, if you will, that I have used to climb some steeper paths. Feel free to share your thoughts about your own in the Comments below.
Preparing for death
it might be instructive
to go to some funerals,
see how they do
with a best friend,
feel how he’s washed
in a bath of words and music and tears
clean of the earth
ready for new clothes.
Death ruptures the life-lines of love. It cuts off our race, even when it looks like we have reached the finish line. If it is love that leads us through life, then it is also true this love takes many forms, even in the run of a beloved fish.
Emerging
from the hidden pool
the Salmon
glides into the stream,
takes the ribbon of waters
hard against the rounded rocks,
in turmoiled foam
finds an opening
into the broadening river.
Leaping in the roiling flood
the Salmon swims
with millions
as with one
to reach the cascade spume
Delivering
the Salmon
to the ocean’s waiting arms,
Releasing
him
to life
among the songs
within God’s sea.
Astronomers have led us into an incomprehensible mystery that easily becomes a metaphor for what confronts each one of us. Each life we live is like an expanding universe of accomplishment and possibility. I’ve written poems like this before. This one is the latest permutation.
They say the earth
is slowing down
perhaps a nano-
second
every century
battered
by the asteroid dust
the oncoming solar light
the nothingness,
And it will fall
in ten thousand million years
into the sputtering sun
reaching out to swallow it.
The say the suns
in our entire galaxy
will fall
as sparks and cinders
into the darkness
at the center
where all the light
will gather
and explode
into another universe.
I contemplate and wonder
as I ask
“What did you say?”
and mutter
“Excuse me, I forgot your name,”
and stumble on the curb,
if I will fall
in such a cataclysm
of rebirth.
Into the sputtering sun…beautiful imagery to carry us, Bill. Thank you. Thank you.
Nancy
Bill, thank you again for your insightful sharing, helping us to have perspective.
I particularly embrace the lyrics to a song on a Celine Dion album, \”FLY\”. The album is titled: Falling into You. Skipping some lines but it states to the dying soul:
Fly beyond imagining. . .
Escape the sorrow and the pain to fly again. . .
Hold this memory bittersweet until we meet
Be on your way, don\’t wait for me
The moon will rise, the sun will set, I won\’t forget
Go now toward the Light.
(I believe we must have healthy mourning for our earthly loss, yet we must release each soul to go on their journey.)
Penny
WONDERFUL!!! Love and awe.