Poetry

Day 956

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Death seems to be all around me. It has seeped into my bones. My thoughts are filled by it. And my feelings. Yet, I don’t understand it. It is so many things in one – intrigue, loss, finality. While it is an essential part of life, why has it flooded my being? Standing under an old oak tree, my back against its barrel trunk covered in rough bark, eyes closed, I beg for a shred of the silent ancient wisdom it holds. Its roots connect me to grieving mothers everywhere. I see their shattered hearts, vanished futures and hollowed rib cages mirror mine. The globe is covered in a blue fishnet of grief.

Helen Dunmore, a poetess, writes about death, staring it in the face with calm and courage as cancer takes home in her body. She wrote this poem 12 days ago, 12 days before Death took her in her arms.

Hold out your arms

Death, hold out your arms for me
Embrace me
Give me your motherly caress,
Through all this suffering
You have not forgotten me.

You are the bearded iris that bakes its rhizomes
Beside the wall,
Your scent flushes with loveliness,
Sherbet, pure iris
Lovely and intricate.

I am the child who stands by the wall
Not much taller than the iris.
The sun covers me
The day waits for me
In my funny dress.

Death, you heap into my arms
A basket of unripe damsons
Red crisscross straps that button behind me.
I don’t know about school,
My knowledge is for papery bud covers
Tall stems and brown
Bees touching here and there, delicately
Before a swerve to the sun.

Death stoops over me
Her long skirts slide,
She knows I am shy.
Even the puffed sleeves on my white blouse
Embarrass me,
She will pick me up and hold me
So no one can see me,
I will scrub my hair into hers.

There, the iris increases
Note by note
As the wall gives back heat.
Death, there’s no need to ask:
A mother will always lift a child
As a rhizome
Must lift up a flower
So you settle me
My arms twining,
Thighs gripping your hips
Where the swell of you is.

As you push back my hair
– Which could do with a comb
But never mind –
You murmur
‘We’re nearly there.’

 

 

Day 943

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Love is…

Time has 3 dimensions.
Truth has 3 dimensions.
Consciousness has 3 dimensions.

The essence of the past is love.
Everything in the present is aimed at love.
Same is the hope for the future.
Love is what makes us complete.
Love is infinite, never ending…hence incomplete.

Love alone is supreme – a river of life,
Seeking the ocean of existence.
Your source is love and goal is love.
The path is also love.

Love is our very nature.
Though love is only one, it manifests in many ways.
Praising is uplifting – an expression and awakening of divine love.
Seeing divinity in every form – trees, flowers, road, TV, others, self …
Knowing that we are born out of fullness – wanting to offer and give.
Remembering someone you love kindles love.
Memory, a deep impression of divinity.

A desire to serve and surrender willingly to the divine is love.
Being a friend, relaxing together is love.
Seeing divinity as a child, like baby Krishna or infant Jesus.
Making the divine your beloved.
Dissolving oneself in the divine is love.

Being one with the universe is love.
Unbearable longing for the divine is love.

Love is the language of our soul.

(Source: Teachings of Sri Sri Ravi Shankar)

Day 940

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The dark thing that sleeps in me

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Thomas Joiner, author of “Lonely at the Top: The high cost of Men’s success” is an avid suicide researcher. He lost his father to suicide.

His career choice is dismissed by some as : “You’re just trying to fix your own psychological problems, just like all mental health professionals.” Having psychological problems is not insulting. They are common, often treatable and nothing to be ashamed of.

Surely, heart and cancer researchers are not perceived in the same light. This is another reflection of the stigma that surrounds suicide.

Stigma is fear combined with disgust, contempt and lack of compassion – all of which flow from ignorance. We need to understand that suicide is not easy, painless, cowardly, selfish, vengeful or rash. It is not caused just by medicines, anorexia, smoking or plastic surgery. It is partly genetic and influenced by mental disorders which in themselves are agonising. That it is preventable (eg. through means restriction like bridge barriers) and treatable (talk about suicide is not cheap and should warrant specialist referral).

Once we get all that in our heads, we need to let it lead our hearts.

“I am terrified of this dark thing that sleeps in me,
All day I feel its feathery turnings,
Its malignity.”
– by Sylvia Plath

Source: ‘Myths about Suicide’ by Thomas Joiner.

Day 935

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Defeated as a dead dog

At the end of my meditation, I don’t want to open my eyes. There is nothing more to see. I don’t want to open my mouth. There is nothing more to say. All is done. There isn’t much more. It would be ok to have a quite existence in an obscure little place that no one has heard of.

At the end of my meditation, the word ‘acceptance’ hits me like an arrow right in the middle of my forehead. What is the distinction between ‘acceptance’ and ‘resignation’? How can either be experienced without a sense of defeat?

Where is the need to wake up to an alarm every morning?  Where is the need to wade through the London traffic every day? What for? There are more peaceful ways to get through time. I long for them.

The last bit of Liz Lochhead’s poem ‘Favourite Place’ written in memory of her husband:

“But tonight you are three months dead
and I must pull down the bed and lie in it alone.
Tomorrow, and every day in this place
these words of Sorley MacLean’s will echo
through me:
The world is still beautiful, though you are not in it.
And this will not be a consolation
but a further desolation.”

Day 930

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Anthony

Look out for me and watch the signs
I have come to you, so many times
I am a feather that falls from the sky
I am in those events that make you think – why?

I know that you feel me when I am around
I guess there’s breeze or a certain sound
I can see in your eyes my presence is felt
In a movement, a glimpse, or something you smelt.

In my new life I’m different, there’s so much to do
But still my thoughts turn back to you
I sometimes play truant from this world of beauty
I must get in touch, I feel it’s my duty.

For giving me life, for just being there
For showing me love. For showing you care
I feel I must thank you and tell you each day
That I know I am loved, that won’t go away.

Despite all the sadness a cruel world applied
You kept me afloat till the day I died
And now I can tell you- have no fear
For certain I know you will meet me here.

So in the days ahead, till the end of your life
Whatever the worries, whatever the strife
Keep strong, keep loving, keep living with joy
Remember me … your friend, your boy.

‘From son to his loving Mother’ by Anthony’s dad for his wife Nicola who uses Anthony’s favourite T-shirt as her pillow case.