Succumbing to the smoothest of fingers,
I die.
A little death,
a divine death,
releasing just enough of me
into the plain where souls meet and dance,
leaving just enough of me
to remember
that in order to live again
everything must die.
When my pulsing slows
my breath quiets
I cup your hand over mine
close the portal
between spirit death and mortal life
harvest the life force
re-newed
re-seeded
re-imagined
re-born.
Our souls the tenants of these
corpuscular dwellings
seek release.
Any open window
any doorway draft
any bodily aperture
will open
and shutter shut.
With so many openings,
how is it we kill our souls?
We take our free spirits
and enslave them
hypnotize them
with shiny objects
until our broken souls
cease
to slip out
dull
darken
deaden
until,
numb and relentlessly,
we are more dead
than alive.
But still our bodies live.
My Father, one of the deadened souls
chasing shiny promises,
locked in the slavery of his beating living body
the entrapment of his pulsing yearning mind,
has died.
Knowing he was slipping the confines
of a dead life
re-enlivened him.
For 48 hours he lived large and full,
sated finally,
from a lifetime grasping for more,
he had something to give to others:
tears, laughter, gratitude, stories, love and well-wishes.
Choosing to die – strange how we turn everything to our choosing,
as if we could choose not to die –
he chose to live
right up until his last hour.
I open every portal
I release my soul
over and over
die again and again
la petite mort
die just enough
for my soul to slip out
into the plain where
souls meet and dance
and perhaps –
just perhaps –
meet a father-shaped soul
released when
the man who missed all the little deaths
died fully
completely
satisfied finally –
le grande mort.
Really, really lovely.