UNTIL THE VERY LAST BREATH

When we look at death’s door it
looks like nothing at all

Blank and featureless
a serious expression on a featureless

face that could be gazing across
empty desert or a crowded room

at a dark frail flower limp on its
stem or a king propped up on his

ermine pillows surrounded by wives and viziers
or at a wall as blank as itself

in front of unfathomable space
full of indifferent planetary matter

whirling to its own music

a camel sleeping by a tent-flap
waiting to be mounted for a month’s trek

a plane smoothly gliding twelve hours homeward

a mortally sick pre-teen boisterously
chatting with ten best-friend schoolmates

a lone spider waiting too long on an
unprofitable web in a dusty under-populated

corner

This side of the door is the
only side of the door we can see

Centuries pass through the moment
and it remains the only

side we can see though before it in its
shady light and unambiguous atmosphere

huge ceremonies take place
and backwards celebrations with the

celebrants holding their breath

Oh ocean behind the door of true pure
silence

Ocean behind death’s door in us of true pure silence
by the shore of the living and most alive

daily ocean of silence

none of us alone for an instant
from your thralldom’s kingdom

have mercy on the little ones and the
afraid

You are God’s door in your
starry radiance

standing with no walls in
emptiness of space

each creature eyeing you with
fond hope and expectation

knowing the annals of your
complicated mythologies and your direct

irrefutable invitations

So many symphonies written to
woo you

so many choirs written to call up your
most sympathetic angels to soften the blow

so many doors for each one of us
erected in the stir and softness of

each one’s cosmos with their exact
particulars and names whispered or said out loud

God King of all this
King and Master of our allotted breaths

unmistakable recognition as the
door squeaks open a tiniest crack

and one sharp ray of Your Light pours out
even should we live many decades more

in perfect or in dubious health
our own bodies Your

death door behind which our
organs play their parts to the

best of their energies and according to
Your decree’s calculated speed

a lightning flash splatter shock above a
sleeping town

the irritable nose twitch on a
deeply hibernating bear

the first smile not from intestinal gas
on a new baby’s face

fairy lights over a meadow
bird flocks gathering in a spring

birdbath ten or twenty at a
time

time suddenly at the end of its
tether with no length left

Let the blast of Your sweet
Mercy never subside on all of us

one creature at a time
and all of us together

at once

Death’s door’s
silent smart momentary

ding dong bell

tart dewdrop
on our silent tongues

All’s well
_____________________________
3/25/14 (from The Sweet Enigma of it All)