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
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