By Susy Crandall
sometimes keeping going is the only thing to do.
just put one foot in front of the other
even when all you want to do is
STOP
and jet off, uncoiling this mortal coil, snapping the cord
that holds you here on this
terrestrial ball
sometimes I have felt myself leaving
when I look up
at the stars or sun and moon.
after all, I have been there before
looking out over the backside
of the moon at Orion.
it’s nice up there.
still something keeps telling me “No, not yet—
there is much left to do and have
and let go of,
so it will be awhile.
but when I learn to make each day
one long song of Praise,
when doing what I don’t like to do is
Sacred
even if it’s nothing but lying flat on my back
staring at that ceiling in that nursing home
making a complete Heaven of boredom
finding God in smaller
and smaller things
till this body becomes translucent with age
and evaporates into
living through my death and death
And deaths after death.
besides, the more of me that dies
the clearer my sight becomes
and beauties I never saw before I see now,
the soft-shelled turtle a foot wide
that lives in the ditch,
or the coyote crossing the road at dusk,
that sandy haired cousin
of Baryshnikov,
or the colors in the clouds.
when I could leave, I wasn’t grounded
but neither was I finished being made
and now I know I’ll never be finished
so, “No,” I say to myself
when I’m really down and out and
I want to leave.
“Not yet.”
let’s just see what’s left,
what’s left waiting to be born
out of this piece of death
this peace of death
till the last breath whispers “Now,”
and I am ready to go
birthed into death
and gone home to my love.
_______________________________________
About Susy: Itchin’ to write, to scrape the painfully unexpressed off internal organs and lay it out in fresh air and sunshine to heal, where sharing fractionates pain. Scrubbing out the last of my angst cabinets to fill with love and light to live, a worker among workers, a friend among friends.
-posted on red Ravine, Monday, April 18th, 2011
-related to posts: WRITING TOPIC — DEATH & DYING, Does Poetry Matter?, and Tortoise Highway
Susy,
I read your poem twice, saying “Yes, yes, yes” to your words. You’ve distilled the questions we ask ourselves about keeping on with living, and why we must, and what we’re supposed to do about it. Thank-you!
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This poem reminds me of Robert Frost’s “Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening.” He contemplated life, and needing to press on vs. dying, too.
I don’t think it’s acceptable in our society (unless we’re very old or incredibly sick) to say we think about the ease of laying it all down and just dying. Your poem is brave because you let yourself ask the question.
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Thanks Teri and Sinclair for your comments. I wrote this poem in my late 30’s. I’m 54 now. I was working through a lot of stuff at the time and jetting off was really tempting at times. My poem reflected a yearning for ‘home’ that I rarely feel anymore, having resolved lots of those issues which has enabled me to find ‘home’ more often right in the here and now. Who knew that’s where ‘home’ was hiding out? I really did have an ‘out of body’ experience at the time, ‘looking out over the backside of the moon at Orion,’ and have a funny story to tell about that too. I’ll put it as written in a later response if anyone is interested, but I don’t have access to it right at this moment. One of the earliest poems I ever wrote as a teen was about the approach of death and I’m working on another one right now in the form of a dialog with death. I’m driven to deal with it. It’s tough, but I’m driven to deal with the reality of it right now. I don’t know why exactly, but I do know that what is going on in Japan right now has a lot to do with it.
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Reminds me of a dream I had….So satisfying..
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Thanks Posie! That out of body experience happened on the edge of sleep. Thanks bb sis!
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My sister, the poet. I’m proud of you, honey.
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Loved the stanza that starts with “translucent with age”. This is a beautiful, sometimes scary poem. I love the wisdom of “finding God in smaller and smaller things”.
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Love this poem and it made me think of your mother and grandparents. This had an end of life but not done yet feel for me. Maybe it’s just all the major health crises I’ve gone through, but it really struck a chord for me. Keep writing or that itch will never improve. Actually, it may get worse, but what the hay.
Love you, Judy
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Susy dear, this poem means so much, its a prayer and I will keep it near always. Love you, Aunt
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Dearest Lucy, Glenda, Auntie Judy and Auntie Toddy, Thanks so much for your comments and support! I do love this poem and struggled with it for a long time before I was willing to declare it finished being made, but like me, I’m not sure it is. But maybe it is finished enough. I had a friend who chided me about perfectionism, which is somehow in my mind hopelessly entangled with procrastination, and who taught me the idea of ‘good enough.’ Good enough is good enough and good enough doesn’t exclude my best on any given day.
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I’m glad Glenda highlighted the line of “finding God in smaller and smaller things.” It is one of those truths that seems too good to be true. I lets me off the hook about trying and trying to see/find/know God in big miracles.
Maybe it doesn’t have to be so hard.
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Rich with emotion and vision, I appreciate your creation. Thanks for inviting me to see your work.
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Susy: I’ve read your beautiful poem several times and it has touched me in ways that leave me speechless.
I honestly don’t know what to say other than Thank You.
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Susy, thank you for sharing your poetry on red Ravine. I’m intrigued that you wrote this in your 30’s. I would not have guessed that. It sounds like you’ve had a dialogue with death since way into your youth. Some people are not afraid of death, or afraid to have the dialogue. I think of Poe and how he confronted death on different levels, sometimes combining romance and death in the same poem.
Lines that draw me:
besides, the more of me that dies
the clearer my sight becomes
living through my death and death
And deaths after death
And translucent with age, a visceral line, a lovely line.
You talked about perfectionism and it reminded me of something I read about Donald Hall. I think I mentioned it years ago on red Ravine, maybe put a link to the interview where he talks about editing a single poem for years. I’ve since read that there are poets that hardly edit at all. I wonder what draws people toward one way of working or another.
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Susie,
I am glad you finally decided to declare your poem finished enough so that the rest of us can appreciate it, learn from your experience and add to our own dialogues with life and death. I like hearing that you wrote this more than 20 years ago and now you are revisiting it in community, sharing with others. It must be interesting to think of where you have come from, what’s changed, what has stayed the same in your relationship to death. Many of your lines stood out for me, but I liked this one a lot:
but when I learn to make each day
one long song of Praise,
when doing what I don’t like to do is
Sacred
I’ve been thinking a lot about perserverance these days and trying to find ways to do some of those things I don’t like and to frame them differently. Your lines will help me with this.
Also, I heard something by Sage Cohen that helped me a lot about the perfectionism issue. She said that she strives for professionalism instead of perfectionism. For some reason this has stuck with me and I try to call it up when I am paralyzed in trying to make everything perfect and afraid to let it out into the world. Besides, once you share things, you get so much more feedback on how you might want to make changes or not. I look forward to reading more of your work!
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Dear Teri, Finding God in smaller and smaller things doesn’t happen easily in this world. For the longest time my ideas were way too big for that. But I have been given permission, and I guess I needed it, to imagine my own conception of God. In my conception, God willingly concerns Godself with the least of my worries and stands ready to help me at any given moment and loves me inside and out exactly as I am forever and always. I know God loves me inside and out exactly as I am. Since I know this, I also know that God loves everyone that way. No exceptions.
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Dear Lisa, Thanks for looking in on my work. I’m doing more and more writing!
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Dear Robin, Thank you for your sweet note. Something makes me want to send you this prayer I wrote. I was going through fear about changing jobs at the time and a friend suggested I write a letter to God about it. Needless to say, I was surprised to see what came out.
Dear God,
You know I took it under advisement and asked you first and waited upon your will as best I could considering I usually, or at least have been known to do none of those things. Dearest and most patient Lord, it seems to me that being known by you involves my own willingness to know myself and that we go into those dark places together, or, not at all because of your gift of free will! What a brave God you are laying yourself down in a creation that can say “No,” to you. And the “Nos” we ascribe as coming from you, are they really “Nos” or just the cause and effect of existence in physical reality or even just our own imagination? What if you, your God self really never says “No,” despite all appearances and interpretations to the contrary made by your hopeless, grieving and suffering children? What if all we had to do to hear your endless “Yes!” was to ask you for the willingness to change our own minds?
Dear Lord God, Transform my fear about changing jobs into love that results in a loving presence that participates productively in this beautiful and unique day you have given me. Love, susy
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Dear Quoinmonkey, Really that poem sat on a shelf and gathered dust for a long time. I looked up my original copy and found that I wrote it in June of 94 when I was 37, almost ready to turn 38. I was in a poetry writing class at the time. Some things bothered me about it and I thought some parts were clumsy and couldn’t figure out how to fix them. I pulled it out a short while ago and took it to a writer’s group. They had some very helpful suggestions that I used to trim it down a bit.
Deaths after death for me are points in time where I’ve let go of things, ideas about who I think I am, resentments, past history, self-centeredness, thinking, thinking, thinking!! All that has brought me closer and closer to the present moment which really is the only place beauty can be found.
Translucent with age referenced an experience I had in a nursing home with an elderly woman from my church. The neckline on her gown was low and her skin was so beautiful and so thin I could see the blue veins tracing underneath it. I got a sense of how lovely she had been but also how lovely she still was, with a healthy sexuality that somehow still radiated from her as it it came from her bones. I’ve never forgotten her.
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Dear Teresa, I guess what’s changed is that I feel some urgency to deal with the reality of death. In our culture here in America we don’t prepare ourselves to die. Or at least it doesn’t seem like it. We prepare ourselves for so many other life events. Why don’t we prepare ourselves to die? Because it’s so frightening I guess, and maybe we’re superstitious. Talking about death draws death to us. Really? I think the opposite is more likely to be true. I know some older people make plans for the event of their death. People buy life insurance. People plan their funerals. But it’s not talked about and I confess I haven’t planned my funeral yet. The one that’s next on the table will be my mother’s, barring accident ;).
I remember when I was a child learning about death, that that concept stood opaque against the concept I had of myself. I felt my unique consciousness so strongly that I couldn’t imagine a. that there had been a time when I wasn’t, and b. that there would come a time when I would no longer be. And of course I was very frightened of it when I began to understand it more fully. I think it should be talked about more freely across the lifespan.
People do such stupid things out of the fear of it. I think the next evolutionary step for humanity might just be in the conscious dealing with the reality of death. Seems like to me lately, we’re collectively giving ourselves many opportunities to do just that, helping climate change along and trusting nuclear power.
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Susy,
I agree with you wholeheartedly. I work as a social worker in a hospital and in my private practice as a therapist. I primarily deal with pregnancy loss, but sometimes the death of mothers and other family members occurs. It amazes me sometimes how much control of things people think they have and avoid thinking about this aspect of life until they are faced with it themselves in some way. Then there is the sense of betrayal, like wait, this isn’t supposed to happen to me! In regards to pregnancy, everyone focuses on what they want to have happen and block out the possibility of something going wrong and they definately don’t think of death. Except for people who come from other countries where they are more familiar with death on a daily basis and/or they belong to cultures more comfortable with talking about it and ritual to help them to find meaning, to cope with it, etc.
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making a complete Heaven of boredom
finding God in smaller
and smaller things
I adore these lines. I have found my peace with “boredom,” enjoying a reprieve from an extraordinarily hectic life. There is wonder in everything; as someone who believes in a more nature-based faith, I see God, Sacredness, and Divinity in the most basic of things.
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Hi Susy,
Thank you !!! for the wonderful poem.
“but when I learn to make each day
one long song of Praise” is something I will strive for.
Next month it is my turn to take a devotion and snacks for the church council meeting. I am a member-at-large. I am going to read your poem. The first time I read it I cried. I appreciate reading about when you wrote it and about perfectionism as mine is biting me lately.
Lots of love and hugs.
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“Making heaven of boredom…” Just the joy of mere being, of finding satisfactions in the overlooked and mundane, in ordinariness the extraordinary – that is what I strive for in life and always will. Thank you for a remarkable viewpoint so beutifully expressed. G
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“I have been behind Orion.” Oh that one bit says so much.
Thank you for sharing this, I cannot express how deeply this has touched me.
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So many fears confronted, embraced, accepted, in one beautiful reading. Thank you so much. LT
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Glad to see my poem is still being enjoyed. Here’s the story behind ‘looking out over the backside of the moon at Orion.’
I still remember that night I woke my husband up, smiling, “Randy, I just popped out of my body and was looking out over the dark side of the moon at Orion.” I’ll never forget how panicked he looked just for an instant. He knew I’d been losing it, getting a little crazier every day it seemed, I’m sure, and now he’d have to ship me off to the looney bin, no more delay or denial. Then his expression cleared, he seemed to find his center again, and he responded strictly pedantic and serious, “Orion? From the dark side of the moon?” and then “You couldn’t possibly have seen Orion from that perspective!” The laughing that began between us grew to hilarity, his in relief at the sanity in mine and mine in amusement and gratitude at the courageous teacher in him and how it saved us.
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