Figuring Out Life While Aging
When does death begin?
Before the last breath,
at the diagnosis,
when the symptoms reach consciousness?
A trip and fall in old age,
a desolate, desperate plunge,
as the car skids
on an icy road?
With childhood illness,
at the first breath,
when the sperm
lands on the waiting egg?
When eyes first meet,
as lips and hands touch,
with the grasping embrace
and thrust?
Death begins with life.
I shall go naked into my shroud, no robes or rings, just flesh and bones, go shrouded into the earth where flesh will leave bone, and bone will linger.
The days are comfortable while the night closes in. I walk in sun-blind mornings with crippling feet and a dizzy mind. I close the blinds against the approaching dark and remind myself to count our remaining blessings as autumn provides rich colours.
A poem I wrote many years ago.
I eat my time like honey
drooling
down
unto my tongue.
We live a stone's length -
(name,
birth-death)
While inbetween
we cram and crush
such sweetness in
Bardo
In some schools of Buddhism, bardo … is an intermediate, transitional, or liminal state between death and rebirth. – https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bardo
The sun angles wrong on my eyelids;
I resist waking in this strange place.
I feel my father’s room;
The plants gone, the walls striped
Of the photos of the many people he loved,
The chairs and chest huddled together,
The bed barren, the lounge chair empty,
His life in boxes
To be removed.
In Death’s waiting room, I watch
The receptionist checking files, and
I tell her it’s not me. I don’t
Have an appointment
Yet, I hope.
This one here beside me,
Who is looking away and
Doesn’t know it’s time,
Who doesn’t want to go
Into the next room.
It’s not me, I tell her,
Not me yet, I hope.
A friend of my youth has died, and another is probably dying. Microcosm. The world is in a perilous state. Macrocosm.
I imagine death
socking me
as I change lanes,
my hair flying as
it did in my youthful dancing
I imagine death
dulling me
as I lounge
watching war and weather casualties
on the tv news
I imagine death
surprising me
while I stretch in yoga class
earnestly trying to reach
more
I imagine death
counting what years I have
left
and know more deeply
that I am dust.
Learning Living 