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A Jisei: A death poem
I’m at peace now
Now in my half life, half death
I’ve come to know I am the earth.
I feel earthly rhythms I’ve never felt or knew about before.
I feel my earthly connections viscerally . . .in myriad . . .ecstatic ways, to every rhythm of earth. . .
every rhythm of the cosmos
I am at peace
My age has gifted me with remarkable sensitivities,
despite my fading essence.
I feel gravity ebbing from me as I return to the womb of Mother Earth.
I levitate as I barely graze the land,
suspended in a watery amniotic,
rocking gently to earth’s rhythms.
Gently hugged. . . enshrouded
Becoming one with the earth. . . at peace.
Annual and circadian cycles animate
and regenerate my life forces every morning
awakening my blood as my heart rate, blood pressure, body temperature rise in sync with the daily rhythm.
I feel them ebb as daylight fades.
I feel my kidneys and liver awaken and stretch as I do now.
I feel these same circadian cycles in sync with bacteria, algae, insects, birds and mammals.
All living creatures pulse with the cadence of life in unity.
I am at one with the living world.
I am more aware of the complex network of my many bodily fluids, each connected, not just to my bodily functions but to earth rhythms
In the majesty of the cosmos I swear my cerebral spinal fluids can detect the earth’s Milankovitch tilt,
in progress as the Earth’s axial tilt shifts between 22.1 and 24.5 degrees
and back again every 41,000 years.
My pericardial fluids sense the infinitesimal wobble in the earth’s 26,000 year cycle.
I revel in the ecstasy of the nighttime explosion of seminal fluids.
I feel viscerally the new moon and lunar cycle and my essential fluids rise and dispel with neap and spring tidal rhythms.
At especially sensitive moments. . . I buoy at solar tides.
I am energized by earth’s passage through spiral arms of the Milky Way when Earth is bombarded with cosmic rays.
I hear the songbirds
but now I know they are singing to me.
Yesterday they were so vocal I sang thanks back to them …..
they were silent for hours.
Where do songbirds go to die?
They, like I, will just fly away to the heavens and won’t come back.
Afloat on my back in Georgian Bay, my arms and legs splayed, staring up at the endless sky,
I am aware now that I am the water.
I feel my skin melt and dissipate as I float
and I become one with the water.
On a walk in the woods I am like a waft of warm air and the leaves ruffle gently from my presence.
I feel now the flow of my synovial fluids in my limbs
that ebb and flow with the rhythms of the forest I walk.
I am the forest. I feel it in my bones.
I am ‘shirin-yoku’ ( forest-bathing)
The forest trees know I am coming. . . I speak to them underfoot.
I know this . . .
My ‘earthing’ connects me directly to the fungi underground
-the mycorrhizal network ( the wide wood web)
connecting the roots of trees and plants,
sending warnings of danger
They know I am a friend.
Paracelsus (b. 1493), reminds me ,
“The art of healing comes from nature, not from the physician.”
I heal, as I fade.
I am awash in the millennial flow and rhythms of energy, alive in Mother Earth,
A trace in the orchestral majesty of life.
I am at peace.
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So moving and exactly how I feel about being one with nature.
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1 Reactionfrom the Japanese haiku poet Issa (1763 – 1828)
(on the death of his child)
DEW EVAPORATES
AND ALL OUR WORLD
IS DEW ... SO DEAR,
SO FRESH, SO FLEETING
ISSA
one more....
Life & Death
- a poem by Rumi
https://www.rumi.org.uk/life-death/
look at love
how it tangles
with the one fallen in love
look at spirit
how it fuses with earth
giving it new life
why are you so busy
with this or that or good or bad
pay attention to how things blend
why talk about all
the known and the unknown
see how the unknown merges into the known
why think separately
of this life and the next
when one is born from the last
look at your heart and tongue
one feels but deaf and dumb
the other speaks in words and signs
look at water and fire
earth and wind
enemies and friends all at once
the wolf and the lamb
the lion and the deer
far away yet together
look at the unity of this
spring and winter
manifested in the equinox
you too must mingle my friends
since the earth and the sky
are mingled just for you and me
be like sugarcane
sweet yet silent
don’t get mixed up with bitter words
my beloved grows
right out of my own heart
how much more union can there be
come on sweetheart
let’s adore one another
before there is no more
of you and me
a mirror tells the truth
look at your grim face
brighten up and cast away
your bitter smile
a generous friend
gives life for a friend
let’s rise above this
animalistic behaviour
and be kind to one another
spite darkens friendships
why not cast away
malice from our heart
once you think of me
dead and gone
you will make up with me
you will miss me
you may even adore me
why be a worshiper of the dead
think of me as a goner
come and make up now
since you will come
and throw kisses
at my tombstone later
why not give them to me now
this is me
that same person
i may talk too much
but my heart is silence
what else can i do
i am condemned to live this life
i’ve come again
like a new year
to crash the gate
of this old prison
i’ve come again
to break the teeth and claws
of this man-eating
monster we call life
i’ve come again
to puncture the
glory of the cosmos
who mercilessly
destroys humans
i am the falcon
hunting down the birds
of black omen
before their flights
i gave my word
at the outset to
give my life
with no qualms
i pray to the Lord
to break my back
before i break my word
how do you dare to
let someone like me
intoxicated with love
enter your house
you must know better
if i enter
i’ll break all this and
destroy all that
if the sheriff arrives
i’ll throw the wine
in his face
if your gatekeeper
pulls my hand
i’ll break his arm
if the heavens don’t go round
to my heart’s desire
i’ll crush its wheels and
pull out its roots
you have set up
a colourful table
calling it life and
asked me to your feast
but punish me if
i enjoy myself
what tyranny is this
you mustn’t be afraid of death
you’re a deathless soul
you can’t be kept in a dark grave
you’re filled with God’s glow
be happy with your beloved
you can’t find any better
the world will shimmer
because of the diamond you hold
when your heart is immersed
in this blissful love
you can easily endure
any bitter face around
in the absence of malice
there is nothing but
happiness and good times
don’t dwell in sorrow my friend
Translated by Nader Khalili “Rumi, Fountain of Fire”
Cal-Earth Press, 1994
I had carbon monoxide poisoning (with other chemical poisoning) and was close to death for about 4 months in 2003.
The first few weeks I struggled tremendously. Then, I came to some acceptance and had some peace.
And then, I lived.
Now, with another round of life threatening illness...I am not the same. I am not finding acceptance. But that is not really an emotional or intellectual thing. I am just in buckets of physical pain and thinking clearly and having peace is just not part of the picture at all.
Hopefully I will find a way to that, but not there now.
for those who wonder about an afterlife, Eben Alexander is interesting. A neurosurgeon himself, stricken with horrible meningitis. Was close to death an had an after life experience.
The interesting thing being that, going over the medical reports after he recovered...he realized that at the time he was having his experience of the afterlife, his brain was far too impacted to produce the images he saw and experiences he felt.
Evidence that what he experienced, could not have been produced by the mins, by the human body, by biology, by the physical world ---- but, by something else...
Dr. Eben Alexander: A Neurosurgeon's Journey through the Afterlife
Personally, I was in my doctor's office. Near me was an older man, maybe 75. But in amazing physical shape. Very powerful presence. I had never met him before. All of the sudden, clear out of the blue, he turns to me and tells me this story. He was in the Air Force during Vietnam and was shot down. He was near death and he had an experience of the afterlife.
He tells me some of the details and then says, nonchalantly, that after the experience, he felt it was important to share with others.
Now, the thing of it is this: This is not that guy. This is not the "fadist" kind of guy. This was a very very hard nosed, tough as nails, military guy.
It is hard to describe how much he did not fit into the stereotype of someone who would say these things.
All I can say, is that if just about anyone was sitting there, right to him, like I was. It was basically impossible to disbelieve his account. And I don't.
And I have also met others who have reported some things.
I do believe. And not just as some kind of act of faith. I have, to some extent, "felt" that it is quite real.
The actual delusion is really this life, our life now. We are somehow, only seeing the surface of something much, much deeper.
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