Farewell in Poetry

After about 4 months in a blog limbo, I awake today to poetry in my soul triggered by thoughts of death and transformation. Those thoughts took me on a voyage through different pieces of prose on the subject matter. Morbid? Nah. But I suppose it depends on how one feels about death.  

 I especially like William Wordsworth’s 'splendour in the grass/glory in the flower' or to give it its rightful name - Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood:

Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower
We will grieve not, rather find
Strength in what remains behind

In one of those very weird and wonderful weekend seminars of my student days, on the transpersonal tradition in psychology, the facilitator, a Sufi Master, took the group on a journey powered by creative imagination. 

 We were invited to leap on the back of Pegasus, the winged horse in Greek Mythology and fly to where the soul goes when during sleep. I don’t need any encouragement to enter the imaginal realm, the world of myth and magic; just say the word and I am there. 

 Even now I've not forgotten the images encountered on my Pegasus ride as my very active imagination, powered by the right brain hemisphere, took me on that journey: to the soul's home. I came upon a place of restful tranquillity and solitude.  Death must be then one of the portals through which the soul goes home.

 Is there only one such place - the soul's home - or many? 

 My preoccupation with death and dying at this time, is not an unconnected, random thought. No. It comes from the unexpected departure of my friend Dean; he with whom I had a short sojourn in the jowls of the mental health system – the underworld – last year. (See series of 7 posts from July 2013 on the theme from Madness and Human Chaos to Wounded Healer plus Psychiatrist, Avenger & Me).

 At just 39 years of age, Dean died in his sleep. His journey this time, was complete. Death is such a shock, always, expected or not.  

In sharp contrast to the last few years of Dean’s life, his funeral was, yes, sad and grief-filled but essentially joyful and celebratory.  

 There was a lot of laughter and a drawing together of his clan. His nieces played R Kelly’s I Believe I can Fly on steel pans; his sister and favourite cousin read the eulogy which made everyone laugh. Even one of the pastors in attendance made the entire congregation laugh with one of his stories.  

From his perch somewhere in the cosmos, Dean would have loved it all.  And it my mind he would be mouthing Mary Elizabeth Frye’s:

Do not stand at my grave and weep
I am not there, I do not sleep
I am a thousand winds that blow
I am the diamond glints on snow...

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