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PHILOSOPHICAL POEMS
8. Reverie On A Moonless Night (Fall, 1954)
13. Treasures (May, 1956)
14. Answer to For John (June, 1956)
16. Aphorisms (Summer, 1956)
17. Twenty-One (September, 1956)
19. The Mysterious Forest (May, 1957)
29. The Dying Embers (completed 1958)
36. On Understanding (March, 1958)
65. O To Become As A Little Child (July, 1961)
66. Second Philosophical Poem (Fall, 1961; What's the answer)
99. Pessimy (May 3, 1979)
100. The Mystery of Light (6//79)
103. Thou Shalt Call His Name Jesus (10/14/80)
106. Don't Think Don't Feel (11/9/1980)
108. She (12/9/1980)
114. Passing On (8/1/2004)
115. Abstaining from Complaining (12/28/12)
116. Abstaining from Resentment (7/29/13)
117. Abstaining from Impatience (8/5/13)
118. Abstaining from Self-Hatred (5/22/15)
List of Poems
8. REVERIE ON A MOONLESS NIGHT (Fall, 1954)
(inspired by Jack Thornburg)
What is there, to draw a man from bitter thoughts,
Unpleasant things, that make the world
A darkened haze, a void wherein
Whatever would be good or right
Must suffer in the sight of all that it would not?
Dim sparks of love that flicker there
Do some great thing, however small
Bring joy and laughter to forlorn hearts,
Yet wither, for there is no recompense.
Contemplating all that he could do
All the good, the love, the peace
That could be spread in a world
Of pain--contemplating this,
He loses much, he loses more
As more he tries to do.
For none can give and never cease
To pour his soul into the world;
His love had better gone to those
Who gather 'round his hearth on birthdays,
Who get the most from every deed
Because they know--and love--the doer.
A man's heart and soul are neither
Ocean, nor the wind, that do encompass
All within their caress;
Many must be the hearts that do this work,
That spread a little love and joy
To one or two--and hence, to all.
Obscure in the rolling tide of life
Wanting no more than to do their cause
They twinkle and glow, the stars that
Do no more than their light will reach;
They wither and die, the sparks that seek
To light the world.
13. TREASURES (May, 1956)
(to Sue Koeberle)
A song,
A melodious sound,
Floating, drifting
Entwining round my soul.
A song of songs,
A dream of dreams,
A breath of enchantment
That strengthens me,
Is part of me.
A thought,
A golden ideal,
That stirs me deep
Within to cultivate
The fruits and flowers,
The works of God,
A spirit of power,
That spurs me on,
That leads me on.
A view,
A marvelous sight,
Thrilling,subduing
My inner sensations;
A picture rare,
Inspiring, great;
A memorable scene
Enriching me
With confidence.
A verse,
A few little lines,
Tender, simple,
An insight into life,
A rhyme of truth,
Celestial,
A phrase and a couplet
That comes from love,
And fills me up.
A dream,
Airy wisp of some
Imaginary
Panoply of structure;
A hope, a wish,
A glimpse beyond,
To build up a castle,
A faith in works
Ennobling me.
14. ANSWER TO FOR JOHN (June, 1956)
(to Steve Kresge)
I, I do not know
We are alone, together within the tangled mesh
of effervescing life--no, we are neither alone nor together
in this confused pool, broken and ruffled
by crossing, intermingling ripples
that seem a pattern, that seem none, chaos:
dreams, and acts, and voices, making a sermon,
A sermon, but naught but cloudy murmurings, indistinct,
tingling the thought with advice, nonsense.....
The silence of the night, brooding over all, all,
over all, but nothing....
Words crackle heavily in this restlessness,
this quietude, nursing our concupiscence.
You--you are warm, and my mouth waters at your touch;
yet i feel distant, apart, yet a part of you.
I ponder on this vastness, horizons broad as the sea,
but cramped as the reach of a snail within its castle.
Somewhere upon that water drifts a ship,
a ship whose course I should command, whose
spreading wake I should lead.
I cannot tell you all I feel,
for while I speak, I ache and tremble with doubt, with fear,
with doubt about the cryptic meanings,
with fear, for may not a fog blur the approach
and await of that vessel?
I know that I am here, and I am here
now, the verge of a concrescence of our lives,
the gratification of life's urge:
and I am not here, for, like an errant flock,
my thoughts stray again into the sky,
Searching, plucking with a hope to keep, scarce buds
of inspiration, but...killing with that plucking.
I return to you, to say some meaning, to say none;
I leave, I again come, can my unrest explain itself?
The great secret steals before me; I glimpse it,
but my view grows cold again; I do not know.
16. APHORISMS (Summer, 1956)
(Long, long ago, to Rose)
Rampant roots fear not to rend the rock.
Crows steal the seeds while silly scarecrows stare.
Naked in a snowstorm I must be.
17. TWENTY-ONE (September, 1956)
(for my sister Phyllis, on her 21st birthday)
Once a year this nonsense comes,
like measuring daylight's hours,
Like clothespins on the backyard line,
Spaced, pretending there must be
divisions, marking end and end, and beginnings.
Are there joints in the flowing river?
Once it was fun, pin-the-tail and popping napkins.
Now it means something more;
Now you are an adult, a Somebody on your own.
The time comes when it will be no more
than the revolution of the wheel,
No more than the incessant chiming of the tower
as another watch has drifted by.
The gates will close softly, one by one;
Closing on the garden you have tended.
Looking in the mirror you will see
The garden dense with growth, well cared for;
Perhaps a desert, here and there a trembling flower,
or a cairn of rocks.
You will have run another lap around the track,
Grown another ring beneath the bark and sapwood,
Leaving a splendid wake, alive
with whatever you've given it--
Footprints marking out a trail for your remembrance,
for your pensiveness,
Blazoning the way toward the light, the gray.
19. THE MYSTERIOUS FOREST (May, 1957)
(for Dr. Leo Zeff)
There is a mysterious forest on earth
Growing and dying and all giving birth
All reaching upward to grasp at the sky,
Sunshine and rain helping them to grow high.
Their roots interlock, their branches entwine,
But each grows alone in its special design;
Each bears its flowers and ripens its fruits
In its own special way, the one that it suits.
Each one is green, and sap flows in all
And each by itself grows stately and tall.
All make the forest but each is a tree,
Growing and making its identity.
29. THE DYING EMBERS (begun 1950; completed in 1958)
(to myself, feeling sad at the embers in the fireplace)
As I brood in my chamber, so lonely and bare,
My mind quite despondent with grief and despair,
Upon the blank wall I cast a blank stare,
Or glance at the door that shuts out the cold air.
The sun in its pathway despitefully jeers
At my desolate thoughts of my wasted years,
The moon and the star-figures draw out my tears
Of regret and sorrow as my twilight appears.
Continuous labor has all been in vain;
The welkin's requited me nothing but rain.
Softly my hearth breathes a murmur of pain,
Scolding me often, a pitying refrain.
I watch the red embers all dying away
My tragedy reflected in all they can say--
Once like a torch, or the sun lighting day,
A fulgent dynamo, defying decay.
Once it was I that did burn with a blaze
Of sthenic desire to fill all my days
With gilded achievement in myriad ways
By virile bold vigor, winning me praise.
Like the carnelian fire that on my hearth stood,
I seethed with ambition to work for man's good,
But untoward fate cast a dark sable hood,
Blotting my dreams, though I did what I could.
Like those ruddy hot coals, searing the skin,
Echoes of yesterday make a sharp din,
Remind me and chide me with what I have been,
Burn me and spurn me, bringing chagrin.
And now that the time has continued to flow,
My purpose and strength have vanished below.
Succeeding years saw oblivion grow,
Cherished hopes fade away, burning down low.
Like the dull ashes, extinguished at last,
My road has no future, only a past;
The cinders are cooling and hardening fast,
Both they and I on the heap will be cast.
This cadence is just like a dead chunk of clay,
With no heat or light, amorphous and gray.
The flickering wick nods a limp dying ray
At subsiding soft sobs as the fount dies away.
The well is now dry except for some mud
That quickly will yield to the air all its blood.
A chill like an icicle falls; hear the thud--
Soon black opaque darkness will come like a flood
Consuming the levees, rotten with mold,
That struggle to keep out the damp from the hold,
But the collapse will come and all will be cold
As the gelid green water drowns out the fold.
36. UNDERSTANDING (probably March, 1958, because of the paper)
(to no one)
For what is understanding?
Knowledge of the underlying reality?
Verbalized it is false, as a minute
description of the contours of a tree
will not enable us to re-create the tree
Communicated it is wasted, as a little
child knows not the meaning of red,
of square, of growth, of death, until
the words gain associations through
many tellings
Strictured it is killed, as no analysis
of a song, of a picture, of a dance
can explain the excitement, the thrill,
the bond which emanates and enthralls
spectator and performer
Inexplicable, ineffable, no reason but its own,
no key, no clue, no path,
understanding is standing under the heavens,
not playing Atlas, not playing Eurynome
65. O TO BECOME AS A LITTLE CHILD (July, 1961)
(to Eva Brodell)
O to become as a little child,
Whose every hour is beguiled
With many little things to do
And whose world is always new,
Since they're not tired of it all--
Not theirs the pain of Adam's fall;
They have not reached to worry's thrall.
To see the world with children's eyes,
Far more clearly than all the wise,
To feel the urge to run, and tun,
To see the truth in everyone;
To have imagination free,
Dreams that are reality,
Happiness in what you see.
Our Jesus told us we must be
As little children, trusting, free
Of fears, of failure, with open hearts,
And laughing minds, not playing parts
Learned from without, not from within.
He told us we must start again
As if reborn, and free from sin.
Was he right, or was he wrong?
Do little children most belong
To Nature's plan, with life's intent?
And where's the place where our youth went?
Why shouldn't it stay, if that's the plan?
Why can't we live as we began,
Be as a child, while still a man?
I do not know the reasons why
From us our childloke joys do fly.
But knowing children and their life
Frees us from the puzzling strife
That seems to go with growing old.
A child's small hand is more than gold,
Put in mine makes warm from cold.
But why this message given you
Who is still a child? I guess, to
Let you know my thought and mind,
Even though you may not find
These thoughts to be what interest you,
But you brighten up my heart, you do,
And that is what is really true.
So never lose your childlike grace,
And even when you're face to face
With all the problems life and give
With love, and marriage, and death, yet live
As you are now, light from the sun,
Finding everywhere is fun,
And everything that can be done.
66. SECOND PHILOSOPHICAL POEM (Fall,1961)
(to no one)
What's the answer to the question?
What's the question that we ask?
Why do we ask so many questions
And take the oracles to task?
Why is the which and who am I
And where was what, now, tell me why?
We look and look, why do we look
In depth and breadth, at shelf and nook?
Beneath the stones and twigs and leaves?
Behind the shed, along the eaves?
This monstrous game of hide-and-seek
We never win, and so get the beak.
A transcendental new perspective
Beyond the needs of flesh and time
Has wracked the mind of man, an active
Ferment causing thought to climb
Beyond the peak, beyond the top,
We should have known the place to stop
For nothing now we see below,
We challenge all we used to know,
We ask, suppose, make new tableaux,
But never sure that it is so,
Save some, whose questions die away,
And dogma's all we hear them say,
Though conflicts beset every way
That Man has preached to light his day
And all are really just the same,
Another way to play the game.
("Get the beak" is an old "Herm" term meaning frustrated)
("Herm" is the family and school nickname for my brother)
99. PESSIMY (May 3, 1979)
(to everyone)
We are all conscripted into life,
for none of us chose to be born;
Not only that, but we all stand on death row,
for each of us is condemned to die,
and sooner or later, we must each
go on that long journey alone.
And we are all prisoners on the earth,
for we cannot choose to leave;
And even our bodies place limits on us
for we cannot fly, and we must always eat,
and we can only stay awake for so long
and do only one thing at a time.
Our minds strive vainly to comprehend infinity
and to find the meaning of life;
Our sight is curtailed by distance,
and our hearing by babel of noise;
our energy oft dries to a trickle,
and our spirits sink deep into the darkness.
But conscription and condemnation,
imprisonment and limitation
Notwithstanding, there still seems to be
a golden thread there intertwined.
Perhaps not even the mightiest God
could spin EVERYTHING out of gold;
And what we hope for in love
and want when we seek for happiness
May be just that fragile thread
sometimes invisible, always surrounded
and interwoven with the black and grey
threads which carry the bulk of the load;
But it's still there, like the evanescent rainbow,
or the cooling midsummer breeze,
Or the fragrance of a solitary flower,
or the tone of a thrush or a lark, or a bell,
a speck of rapture on a plain of dust,
a burst of beauty in an abyss of pain.
So these things shouldn't make us sad
even though they may not make us merry;
For conscripted or not, our souls can love
and find joy and peace;
and death, though it come as a shock,
releases us from the chain of life,
and is as much of a gift as birth.
100. THE MYSTERY OF LIGHT (7/79)
(to Friends)
It's said there's inward light in me,
Which brightly burns for all to see.
Now, if I had another choice,
Instead of light, to hear a voice,
Like Samuel of old, who heard
(Though no one else) God's spoken word,
Impelling me to word and deed,
Could I not from sin's thrall be freed?
To venture forth around the earth,
And to the gospel give rebirth?
A voice with words is clearer, sure,
Than light, no matter mixed or pure,
Because I must interpret light
In words, but can I get them right?
How can I know the words I choose
Are those which God would have me use?
And even if there were no doubt,
In me or anyone, about
The way I did my light express,
How often still, we all must guess
What inner feelings really mean,
Or what the vision we have seen
Relates to, or to what events?
Are they past, or are they hence?
Are they now, or are they then?
Must I ask the light again?
But words would not these questions raise,
And of their source I could sing praise,
And do whate'er they told me to,
Provided that their sense I kenw.
For now a fault with this I see:
If God should speak in words to me
Why should it be in my own tongue
Of all the languages among
The peoples of the earth? then, why?
For others know as much as I.
Alas! I can't trust light or sound;
So where can truth and love be found?
There is no bulb within to burn
Like candles; nor radio to turn
My feet into some chosen way.
I can but do from day to day
The things I see which need be done,
To make life flow for ev'ryone.
103. THOU SHALT CALL HIS NAME JESUS (10/14/80)
(to all who call themselves Christian)
The heavens opened,
And a dove descended,
And a voice was heard,
In the words of the second Psalm, eighth verse,
Saying,
Thou art my child,
This day have I begotten thee.
Who was it who saw the vision
And heard the voice?
Was it John's followers,
Or John, himself?
Or was it Jesus alone?
Or perhaps all of them together?
The words, THOU art mine,
Make us think that it was to Jesus alone,
Unless the voice was saying
That they were all God's children,
Begotten that day.
The centuries' tale would tell
That Joseph his father --
Or Mary's husband and not Jesus' father at all
If we accept the impossible, ridiculous,
and demeaning tale
Of the Virgin Birth
Which would have us believe
That God horsed around with a human female
Who then gave birth to a son
Without the help of a male --
Anyway, that Joseph heard an angel in a dream,
Saying,
THOU SHALT CALL HIS NAME...JESUS.
And nowhere in the stories do we read
That Jesus claimed or accepted the title of "Christ"
And in fact he rebuked those who called him the "Son of God"
And also those who called him Blessed, and Good Master.
(The sixty-second verse of the fourteenth chapter of Mark
Is obviously a mistake by the author
Because Matthew, Luke, and John all report
That on that occasion Jesus answered,
"You are the one who is saying that"
Meaning that it was not himself who had said that)
Jesus himself said,
In the words of the sixty-first chapter of Isaiah
Quoted by Luke,
The Spirit of God is upon me,
To preach the good news to the poor
And the time of the coming of the rulership of God.
And he said, in the fifth chapter of John,
I can of myself do nothing.
And in the seventeenth chapter of Mark, tenth verse,
Why callest thou me good?
Only one is good, even God.
So the ancient stories themselves tell us
That Jesus was but a man
An extraordinary man, perhaps,
cco wept, felt anger, had compassion,
Thundered against the Pharisees and hypocrites,
Wanted to gather the people of Jerusalem to him
As a mother hen gathers her brood,
And welcomed the little children into his arms.
And the most we can say for "Christ"
Is that is is but a word
Referring to the spirit of divinity
Dwelling within each person
Exemplified quintessentially
In the person of Jesus
But no more than the inherent potential for Godness
Within every woman and child and man.
106. DON'T THINK DON'T FEEL (11/9/80)
(to Alexander Peer)
Don't - think.
Don't - feel.
That's what I say - to - me.
Thinking just confuses me, so stop, stop, stop.
And feeling, ev'ry feeling, it just hurts, hurts, hurts.
What's the use of doing things if it's just for myself?
But I can undertake and persevere without hope of success
And sweat and strain and get sloppy and tired
If it's for someone else.
Not everyone else, I'm sorry to say,
Just the many and any who're special to me.
But we have to think, the savants say
And we have to feel, is the cant of today.
Your feelings are your life and breath.
Repressing them's the living death.
I know that for sure, my objectivity knows,
Because of my stomach, which sours and squalls
When I swallow my anger,
Or button my lip and my throat and my tongue,
Or when I'm bursting with pressure
To say to a woman,
I like what you're wearing. I like how you look.
I'd like to sit near you. It makes me feel good.
But no, no, I shrivel and blench,
Close up my eyes and twist up my mouth,
I feel like an octopus that's just squirted ink.
I feel like those feelings, they just make me stink.
'Twas easy to write, but harder to say.
I'm afraid of driving each woman away.
So.
Don't think, don't feel,
Do what you can, but do what you must.
Your mission in life is to fetch and to carry,
To work, with a will, with a song, but to work.
Oh! could I sing, like a finch or a thrush.
Her purpose is that, and it fits with the rest,
But it doesn't fit me, as far as I see,
It doesn't fit me, it just doesn't fit.
And thinking's no answer, when feeling's a pain;
I bat at my mind and my head and my brain,
Look in each face, and hope for a smile,
I know that I give one, once in a while.
Is life so tedious, and existence so dreary?
Of everything under the sun I am weary.
And all is the same, from my rise till my set;
I try, but I'm tired, but it's not over yet;
An unanswered riddle is all that I find:
A heart of granite and an addled mind.
108. SHE (12/9/1980)
(to Lilith)
It is a lie to call God "He".
Therefore I call Her She,
I call her Lady and Mistress,
Lilith, Mother of all creatures.
It would be a lie to say the earth is flat,
Or that water runs uphill,
Or that two equal objects would fall at different rates.
Therefore we do not say those things.
We could say that God is a tree
Because She has properties like a tree
But that would not make Her into a tree.
We could call Her a rock, or the ocean, or the sun,
Because She has properties like them,
Because She is permanent and enduring,
Because She welcomes all into Her bosom,
Because She warms and gives life to all life,
But that does not make her a rock or the ocean or the sun.
It may be that there is truth
In the inspired wisdom of our time
That God is neither male nor female
Nor both,
But is in fact a thing like the ocean or the sun,
Even, if you will, a spirit or being,
Sexless, as they are sexless.
It may further be that this Being,
Whether neuter,
Or hermaphroditic,
Is still one to which we can relate personally,
Or which relates to each of us personally,
That is, as if it were a person,
Though that be no more than anthropomorphic projection,
Just as calling God a Being
Or He or She
Or even saying, A God,
And capitalizing the word,
As if it were a proper name,
That is, the name of a person,
Is anthropomorphic projection.
(O Giver of all life,
And Strengthener in time of distress
Let me know You aright
And walk in your paths all the days of my life!)
To impute will, intention, personality
To the cosmos
Is to anthropomorphize it.
We do this every time we say, A God,
The Spirit, A Being.
But as long as people call her "He",
I shall call her She.
But why?
Why should the female pronoun be preferred
Over the male?
Does it make any difference?
What is the difference
Between masculine and feminine properties
when ascribed to God?
The difference is there,
And the difference is this,
And it is the reason why She is She
And not He.
(O let us sing
Praises to our heavenly Queen
For She has made us
And nurtures us
And teaches us how to be like Her!)
What is the most godly quality we know?
It is love.
Nay, more, it is UNCONDITIONAL love.
It is caring.
It is caring for EACH and EVERY creature
As we care for ourselves,
As we care for others,
As part of God herself
Without which She is diminished.
It is men
Who have created CONDITIONAL love,
Who create distinctions
Between good people and bad people
And put themselves first,
Who keep for themselves
That which they will not share with others
(Woe unto you, PHarisees and hypocrites!)
Who talk of desert and deserving,
Who fancy themselves rulers of creation,
And saviours of peoplekind,
And all those others
As sheep,
Servants to serve them --
Get out of my way!
The shriek of the pompous male.
Jesus said, He is greatest among you
Who ministers unto you,
That is, cares for you.
Moses said it incompletely long before:
Love God unconditionally,
And love your neighbor as yourself,
And love the stranger that is within your gates.
The wisdom of Proverbs also taught:
Love the stranger; give him food if he is hungry,
and drink if he is thirsty.
Hosea, sufferer and lonely,
Said that God says,
In verse six of chapter six,
A powerful statement of Godlike grace,
I will have UNLIMITED love,
And not ritual and formality;
I will have UNCONDITIONAL love,
And not conditions forced upon others.
Even Paul the apostle,
Enslaver of women and oppressor of men,
Taught
That God is a God of unlimited forgiveness
Side by side with his false picture
Of a God whose wrath burns to destroy us
If we do not accept Jesus as the son of that God.
All through the ages
The gist of people-God-experiences has been
That God is love,
Unlimited, unlimiting.
We do not earn Her grace.
It is there always,
It is there for us to take, and to partake.
And Jesus says,
Even as God sends the rain upon all
And the sun shines upon good and evil people alike,
Then also let your love include all people,
Even as She includes all in Her love.
(The Greek word "teleoi", translated by the King James scholars
as "perfect", actually means "whole" or "entire" or "complete"
or simply, universal.)
Jesus did not say, She.
His picture of God was that of a father,
And it was up to us to return to him,
Who was always there,
Arms outstretched and eager
To welcome and embrace us back.
But that does not prove it.
What hubris, me to question his image!
But I, insignificant as I am,
Have vision and understanding like his.
I will never accomplish in my lifetime
What he accomplished in his,
Because I lack ability and love.
But that does not impair my vision
Nor my understanding of Her ways.
It may be that there have been many fathers
Whose arms were just as outstretched and eager
To receive their children
As any mother
Or the Mother of us all.
But that only happens
When males take on themselves
The unconditional love of a mother.
Who can deny it?
Even Solomon saw
That woman's love was such
That a mother would rather give up her child
Than see it die.
Then Erich Fromm, prophet and seer of our time,
Has said,
Mother's love is UNCONDITIONAL love.
Father's love is CONDITIONAL love.
Now Fromm may be right or wrong,
But in either case I, I do not wish to say,
I will love you ONLY if you do thus-and-so.
That is conditional love.
I would rather be like God
(Lady, help me to be like you!)
And love all Her children unconditionally,
And say, in the words of Ken Keyes,
The prophet of unconditional love,
Who says,
LOVE EVERYONE UNCONDITIONALLY,
INCLUDING YOURSELF.
And he further says that this means,
I love you because you are there,
I love you because you are part of the here and now
of my life.
Although our minds and bodies may be on different trips,
On the consciousness level we are alike in our humanness,
We are one.
Surely God would be less than God
If She loved us conditionally,
If She said,
You must behave yourselves or I will not love you.
Fortunately, O blessed truth!
That is not what She says.
Not the thousands of years of thunderers
Who have said,
God requires you to do thus-and-so,
Or "His" wrath will fall upon you,
And "He" will punish you for your disobedience,
And cast you outside ""His" love
Will make that lie true.
We may love people while we hurt them and limit them,
Because we think we see some greater good,
Because we think that is best for their growth.
So we drown in our selfishness,
Our arrogant pseudo-wisdom.
But helping people to grow
Is not the same as being conditional in our love;
It is not saying,
I will love you, IF you grow.
It is saying,
You can and MUST grow
If you will be like Her,
And that is your heritage and birthright.
I cannot give it to you,
For then it would not be yours.
When we speak thus
We are not withholding our love
Nor placing limits on love.
Lilith! I thrill to your love
Of me,
Of all peoplekind,
And I will never again pervert that love
By calling you male.
114. PASSING ON (8/1/2004)
(composed at a workshop on aging at Berkeley Friends Meeting)
What does death hold for me, or for anyone?
Rather, what do you think death holds for you?
For me, death holds nothing.
Death is not a grim spectre, a skeleton cloaked in black,
carrying a scythe;
Death is a continuation, a transition.
My mother always told me, Death is just passing on, into the next world.
She never said, Someone had died;
she always said, They just passed on.
I sat with my mother on her last day, the day she passed on,
myself and my two daughters.
She was hard to understand, but she seemed to be trying to tell us,
Love each other, have fun with each other, be happy.
I did not know it was her last day until that evening
when Arden Wood called me to say,
Your mother has decided to leave us.
(They also never said anyone died, just that they passed on.)
Three months earlier, I had sat with my father as he passed away,
during his last hours and last minutes.
I remember how there was a kind of gasping wheeze and a shudder
as i sat there holding his hand in one of mine
and the other hand holding his shoulder,
and i could almost see his spirit as it left his body,
a blue-silvery essence as Tertullian says,
thinning out and disappearing.
My father had been unable to communicate verbally during his last year,
but i knew he had heard me
whenever he gave a little quirky smile at something i said,
so we never got to talk about death.
Knowing him, i think it held nothing for him either,
or perhaps i got that from him:
no fear, no pain, no more anything, just a quiet end.
I watched the funeral society men as they came in,
and wrapped his remains in a shroud
and took them to be cremated.
Later i placed his urn in the ground next to my stepmother
and their son, my half-brother.
But i will always hold in memory his last few years;
his health was declining and his conversation deteriorated
but he was unfailingly cheerful and amiable to everyone,
and was clearly loved by the attendants at the convalescent home
where he lived until he passed on.
May i always be as cheerful.
Two of his children, no, three of them, had already passed on:
my half-brother died in 1959 after a truck hit him on his bicycle;
my youngest brother was killed in a plane crash in the Sierras in 1971;
and my sister, one year younger than myself, died of cancer in 1977.
I went up in an airplane to help search for my brother's plane;
it was not found until three months later.
My brother David and i had always been planning to get together
and talk about life and philosophy and everything else,
but now there would be no more chance.
He was loved in my home town where my mother had taught
half the town's residents (it seemed) in her first grade classes,
and where he was building a career for himself;
It was moving to see the endless procession of people of the community
coming to visit my mom and bringing her casseroles and flowers.
And I sat with my sister on her last day as she was sleeping.
I sang songs from our childhood to her as i sat there,
since she did not wake for me.
Next morning my spouse answered a phone call and then said,
Phyllis's gone.
I kept in touch with her six children, my nieces and nephews,
even though they lived all over the country;
But our closeness has dissipated somehow since my mother,
their grandmother,
passed away.
I recall the first funeral i attended, for my father's father in 1952.
My father was crying, and i was frightened by my grandfather's corpse.
I had never seen my father cry before,
and i decided that I didn't ever want to go to a funeral again;
And i didn't until my Aunt Elizabeth passed on in 1980,
and i went to her funeral, and looked at her body
without the same fear i had had 28 years before.
My other grandfather had died in 1943,
working in his fields of barley and tomatoes.
I was only 9 then, and never felt i knew him very well.
In 1956 about, i was working at a job where i had time to meditate;
And in thinking about the matter of death and afterlife
it came clearly to my mind that what we call our life or anyone else's
is just a wave on the boundless, eternal sea of Life
and that what we call death
is just the sinking of that wave back into the sea of Life itself.
The individual seems to be gone,
but their essence remains as part of that great sea.
Twenty years later i had a friend who always tried to persuade me
that people were more afraid of death than anything else,
and that all of our problems and neuroses came from that fear.
But it seemed to me then
and it has always seemed to me
That i do not fear death, nor does anyone else;
For we do not know what death is,
And how can we fear something we don't know anything about.
We may not want it, but we do not fear it
any more than we fear sickness or accident or any other painful experience.
Socrates asked, How do we know that death isn't the greatest good?
Death is like an endless sleep (he said);
And if we remember our most peaceful sleep, undisturbed even by dreams,
Would we not choose such a sleep over all the troubles of existence?
And if the tales of an afterlife be true,
the greatest and best men of all time are there,
Minos and Rhadamanthos and Triptolemus and the rest;
And what would a man not give if he might converse with Orpheus and Musaeus
and Homer and Hesiod and all the other great men of the ages;
What infinite delight there would be in talking to them
and asking them questions!
Socrates also said, The difficulty, my friends,
is not to avoid death, but to avoid unrighteousness,
for that runs faster than death.
And finally, i always remember, when Jean Valjean was dying,
and his foster-daughter Cosette and her husband Marius were there,
He concluded his last words to them by saying,
"It is nothing to die; it is frightful not to have lived."
115. ABSTAINING FROM COMPLAINING (12/28/12)
(to SLAA and myself)
I'm abstaining from complaining,
And it doesn't seem so hard,
But ev'ry other sentence
And my resolution's marr'd.
I'm abstaining from complaining.
I don't know what else to do,
Trying to find some inner peace
Before my life is through.
And what's there to complain about
That noone else has felt?
Since I'm the same as ev'ryone
Oh! let my temper melt!
Let me be as soft as grass,
Rebounding after creatures pass.
116. ABSTAINING FROM RESENTMENT (7/29/13)
(to SLAA and myself)
I'm abstaining from resentment;
It's like poison in my veins.
It betters nothing ever
And ever nothing gains.
I'm abstaining from resentment;
It's like mud upon my face;
And if folks could ever see it
I'd really fall from grace.
I'm learning to accept it all,
And be helpful if i can;
And love it like i do myself.
That surely is life's plan.
I don't need resentment any more;
That isn't what my life is for.
117. ABSTAINING FROM IMPATIENCE (8/5/13)
(to SLAA and myself)
I'm abstaining from impatience.
Why should i wait AND fret
And get all hot and bothered
And make myself upset?
I'm abstaining from impatience;
Impatiently, but then,
No matter what the obstacle,
It just comes back again.
And ev'ry time I get uptight
And want each thing my way
I'm farther off from getting it;
It happens ev'ry day.
Let me relax and be at peace,
Then will ev'ry trouble cease.
118. ABSTAINING FROM SELF-HATRED (5/22/15)
(to SLAA and myself)
I'm abstaining from self-hatred.
It really makes no sense
To hate one of God's creatures
With a rancor so intense;
And if the sages all are right
And everything is good,
We surely ought to love ourselves--
I'd do it if I could.
So if we're one with every thing
And everything is one,
We ought to treat it caringly
Until our lives are done;
And after, too, for all i know;
God goofed it up if that's not so!