Traveling. Journeying. Sojourning.
Being pulled out of one world and thrust into another.
We are a migrating species, and not always by choice.
It is a search for food, and a search for room,
Sometimes we are hostage, sometimes we are exiled
And it never seems to change, for all our changing
We are looking.
He is in bed, and his legs no longer respond to his intent.
We talk about quality of life.
"I know this person, and all he can do is talk; it's all he has left
He cannot move at all," he says.
"So, maybe quality of life for him is being able to communicate," I offer.
I think to myself, what is it, anyway, that lives?
If you cut off your leg, you can still live.
If you cut off both legs, you can, still, live.
What if your whole body is cut off
And you are circumcised of your flesh entirely?
What is this quality?
Birth and death seem so similar then.
Inside, the baby grows until the limit is reached.
Now this world must give out.
This ocean must gush out of a port hole that was never imagined by the baby
A threshold appears as a crack in the world
A hole in the universe that you squeeze through under pressure
And within, all the systems of support have run out, they are ejecting
What does this child know of the outside, beyond his world?
Here, too, we live inside. It is all we know, all we can sense.
And it never seems to change, for all our changing
We are looking.
He is in bed, and his legs no longer respond to his intent.
We talk about quality of life.
"I know this person, and all he can do is talk; it's all he has left
He cannot move at all," he says.
"So, maybe quality of life for him is being able to communicate," I offer.
I think to myself, what is it, anyway, that lives?
If you cut off your leg, you can still live.
If you cut off both legs, you can, still, live.
What if your whole body is cut off
And you are circumcised of your flesh entirely?
What is this quality?
Birth and death seem so similar then.
Inside, the baby grows until the limit is reached.
Now this world must give out.
This ocean must gush out of a port hole that was never imagined by the baby
A threshold appears as a crack in the world
A hole in the universe that you squeeze through under pressure
And within, all the systems of support have run out, they are ejecting
What does this child know of the outside, beyond his world?
Here, too, we live inside. It is all we know, all we can sense.
We have talked about the suicide option
We have joked down our fear, laughing, “Everyone dies, no-one gets out alive..”
But really, don't we?
On this side, all our mechanisms are failing, because what's happening is
Our system is failing and we are getting too heavy for the world we inhabit.
But by this I don't mean, our food reserves and our planet.
It's our spirit.
Our spirit is done with flesh, with old wine, and constructs of the mind.
It will grow, and the old world cannot support it any longer.
Back at the Hospice office,
I listen as the ladies talk,
Their emotions so rational to me in their despair.
“It’s so awful,” or, “It’s so sad,” with downcast faces,
Referring to the natural event that happens to every human
--Even Jesus saw death, if only briefly..
Spirit pulls us through the grave into some new form entirely
Against all rationality
And my mind goes empty
And my spirit swells like the buds on the apple trees....
All mystics experience wonder.
They all know we move into places we cannot imagine
Irrational places, with no words.
It is good to have allies.
Every change, then, is a threshold, which is a little death.
Every change is a shift on the web,
And some part of the past, great reality must give
And what do we know of it at all, but that we grow,
Just as the babe grows out of the womb.
The last threshold of this living, it is death to this planet, this universe
And birth into something else, we don't know.
We migrate
And in this body we inhabit
The last threshold of this living, it is death to this planet, this universe
And birth into something else, we don't know.
We migrate
And in this body we inhabit
When our time comes,
The systems fail, the supplies are exhausted
But outside, are the midwives, whose job it is to deliver.
They are talking to the babe, though it is still breathless in the birth canal.
They are talking to the babe, though it is still breathless in the birth canal.
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