Visits

Hello Dear Ones! I had the great good fortune to attend a retreat with Mirabai Starr in Taos this last October. It was just the thing to bring me back to writing, and I am delighted to share some of the drafts that were born in that workshop with you.

Today’s draft was started in Taos, and in a Death Cafe where the question on the table was, What is your relationship with Death? It is one of those drafts that feels like two or three poems squished together, where my challenge becomes teasing them apart.

That time I choked on a piece of pineapple

Death came and looked at me

with seductive eyes and sensual lips –

I almost followed him

until I realized he was made of smoke and his charms were not for me. 

Not yet.

Later, Death hovered over my Beloved.

Death looked like Morgan Freeman as he sat down to tea. 

Once again, he said “Not yet.” 

He said: “Get to know me so when I come again 

we can embrace as friends,

or as lovers, 

or as an aged couple falling asleep together in the hollowed-out center of their decades old mattress.

How deeply do the eyes of my Beloved shine 

when he wakes and knows that life is his to choose.

An aging body is a blessed body,

not to be ignored, dismissed, or discounted. 

Perhaps my feet will flatten again

despite the years of corrective shoes.

Perhaps my knees will swell every time I lift heavy.

But I can lift heavy.

This I know:

Death trails a shine behind him

for the ones left living to remember their preciousness.