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THE TUMBLER OF DEATH
THE TUMBLER OF DEATH
We all have our dead; they blow ashes and begrime our gaze.
Suffice to say the funeral pyre was emblazoned and proper
Eulogies given; the dead says Poe lives under our floorboards.
They are still in our blood and in this room as they passed off
Into a vapor they still live here. Like dew from the morning grass,
We too will disappear but reassemble as that vapor into a semblance.
From ember to ember we all disappear, invisible like heat from a
Warmed piece of crockery. O dear, but whereto? Whatever we
Dissolve into is a resuming of previous resurrections to die again.
All the self mastered ones knew of this; that we gaze back at images
All the way back until we achieve more godlike bodies that can
Endure all the mercurial changes without constant shattering.
For all the benumbed decimation our godlike youth continues as
The youth of endless summers and for every disengaged cloak of
Flesh, new raiment of forever yesterday is given us to don.
Whisked away, whisked away, eventually we disassociate from earth
As a child who leaves his mother and grows into a manhood where he
Is in charge of all the changes around him, until death is no longer needed.
For all the purported reasons, death though terrifying as dissolution into
Infinite space, becomes for us the end of all listening; listening is for those
Who are still alive and can yet hear death’s footsteps walking with them.
It’s okay to be abraded by the tumbler of death; I remember how many sheep
Were slaughtered on the farm. Our desires are reformed in these tumblings;
Some lives are like rafts in the ocean of samsara abraded between logs.
Eventually we all call out to the boat of Ram as the notes of life and death
Sink into the cold Atlantic, our ears reach out to the harmony and music of
The spheres. Too many well lit necks under the stars calls for the ax.
