We were talking about the life/death/life cycle.
Actually, we were feeling cut to the bone,
The Death side presently looming large in our lives.
Being reeled up the Life side of the cycle is like a roller coaster;
Anticipation: The speed, the thrill, the corner turns, the surprises
It’s memories like butterflies in the stomach inducing us, again
Being spilled down the Death side is like an avalanche;
Shock: The tumble, the slow motion, weight and mass; the wreck at the bottom
It’s aftershocks petrifying those of us still standing, all bruised
And knees bleeding, hands hanging limp, gasping for air.
With shaky legs, we start walking again, limping rubber band legs
And a heart by turns stopping cold, and pounding out of bound.
Once through the whole cycle you never see either side the same again
You are gravid with awareness--
And nothing can be taken for granted
If the world can slide out from under you and take you down,
You and all your familiar and apparently safe ground.
But it is a cycle.
A cycle within cycles, and some are very large ferris wheels.
We have suffered some personal losses
And this community has suffered a great many losses lately
Some go so far as to say this is the Devil’s hand.
I laugh.
Aren’t they yet gravid?
When whole nations reel under the impact of some holocaust
The recovery is counted in generations, not birthdays
I will give no nod to Satan for the losses that teach me to trust out of mind
To love beyond reason: to yell and scream my way into the choir
For they are making me authentic who was so fear-flat and one-sided,
So undimensional.
Now I am the idiot savant, citizen of a kingdom within.
As for this town,
There is a time to live, and a time to die,
And a very many have come here to die.
For some, there is no dimension to death
But for the gravid
It has great import and ceremony; and also, consequence, and danger.
Our skies are heavy with presence.
Our rooms are full of savants.
As for this nation,
The big wheel turns and the rocks start to roll...
Who can say where the land will cave
And who will be left topside?
As for “The Good Life--”
Time and chance happen to all.
Work hard and reap some reward,
But these heavy sacrifices
May be followed by far heavier.
All belong to this visible kingdom.
Life, Death. Life, Death.
Look, and see. It’s all there, all its beauty and all its broken crockery.
*************************
We see it tumbling down in slow motion.
We replay it.
The life cycle takes longer--Lifetimes, millennia.
The avalanche is measured in seconds
And in the light of all that labor
The demolition is already over
We run from the dust and the fallout
But already, we are faced again with untangling and sorting
And starting over.
We rerun the fall-downs again,
Astonished that they just fell
They just fell
And it was monumentally over.
So is life fragile and tenuous or is it really almost invincible?
--It reaches, I say.
The form I cherished that held the spark I loved is broken
And I must reach now beyond form
With a substantial eucharist
Putting all my anguish and pain and hope and passion
Into the evidence of faith,
Which is not by sight,
And commending that to an inevitable life
That shatters all forms as too paltry
Too small
Too graven
Which explodes the womb, the family, the society,
The grave...
**********************
It is easy to get distracted, and no-one will blame you for that.
One day, you are gravid
And all that you cling to
Will not belong to this kingdom.
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