What’s it like . . .

What is it like

What is it like to reach the pinnacle of your life
What is it like to peak and know it
I’m just not quite there yet, but striving
Not physically but emotionally. . . Intellectually
To know you have never been better,
never cared more
never felt so deeply
never felt such oneness with surroundings
electric, ecstatic, sumptuous
My body contracts
but my mind is expanding

I fuss daily with my body
I know it is the only way
the only way to keep my mind peaking
Taking my blood pressure.
Plotting my insulin readings
Regulating my heart beat
Oiling my flaking crepey skin
Holding all together like duct tape
Titrating each sign of decline with variable drug doses
Knowing it’s what I must do
to keep the mind alive
To keep the love alive
All the loves I’ve loved
All the loves I’ve shared
From sweet Jenny and our first kiss under water
To the fullness of my last love
As we share a new home
and prepare to die

While my failing body retreats in this "hospice"
My mind flies out the windows to embrace the world.
My world . . .
My arms embrace the trees
i clamour above to the sky, the stars
I leap over mountains
and raft down stormy rivers on my belly
I am a giant in my mind
and I am just peaking.

What’s it like to reach the pinnacle of your life?
I don’t know. . . . Yet.

I see things now I’ve never known
I feel profoundly I never knew possible
I see electric flashes of light, of insights, memories
recorded long ago. . .
In mediation in the great Zen monastery in Kamakura
and only now the deep meaning of that moment
Is revealed
Or a starry night in the Sahara
Or struggling upstream thigh deep
in a citron coloured river in the Amazon
The birth of a child! My child
Or a night with the Dyak Headhunters
Explosive memories bringing new meaning
new insights
revealing to me
the exquisite connectedness
of those singular moments
of all people
in the physical universe
upon which I have lived my life as a teacher

I was ordained a teacher
10000 students built my internal Infrastructure
to allow these dying moments
to sweep up all those rivers of joy
moments of ecstasy
all those loving moments between teacher and student
between father and daughters
between man and wife
To all those people I have touched
Irrevocably

I am filled with more joy
more love,
more gratitude
more wonder
than a thousand lives can bare
I know I am just peaking now.