In the realm of the passing away - Poem

By: Stephen Levine

Posted: June 13, 2013

   This is the realm of the passing away. All that exists does not for long.
   
   What ever comes into this world never stops sliding toward the edge of eternity.

   Form arises from formlessness and passes back, arising and dissolving in a few dance steps between creation and destruction.
   
   We are born passing away.
   
   Seedlings and deadfall all face forward.
   
   Earthworms eat what remains.
   
   We sing not for that which dies but for that which never does.

   Sitting quietly in the cemetery waiting for nothing the blanket of her knowing is about her, and the quiet is enough.
   
   The silence draws her into the earth where deep all tears repose. Seas greater than the Indian Ocean, Buddha said, wept for all those we have lost.
   
   She cries for love. The mirror for her heart is broken. Her blood a purple Tao beneath her skin. Her lungs an ocean of birth and death.
   
   Tears held back too long flow down the cord from mother to child.
   
   She weeps now so her daughters might be free.

   Years later as the life force disengaged from the body her memories gathered in her heart. Dissolving into the Ocean of Being she found a reflecting pool as clear as she had ever known.
   
   Not disappointed by the absence of angels she died more quietly than expected. And less dead for it all than even God had promised.
   
   Tilting her head slightly to one side she saw Paradise in the space between thoughts.