When Death meets Birth..
The dance between the veils, and the embodied future
And now. ..This strange death of yours
That makes me cringe
Makes me crave saltiness
Yet stay away from water
It dries me out
Yet now, you whisper softly in my ear, with your breath still warm:
“I’ll take you on a journey through water”
In all those weeks after your passing
I enter the water of your pain
The blanket of tears that first night
A strangely comforting blanket
The frozen hands reaching back out of the fire
The droplets of mist surrounding you
“I ascend the stairs of the river’s mouth” you said
Taking the shape of water, what ever it fills
And the oar descends toward the deep
Water is the only thing you could blame to keep you on earth
You tell me when you wake me up every night at 3
You the waterman
How strangely bizarre this big resolution
A strange urge to stay on this blue planet
For three days straight now
You have been a shrimp
A shrimp in fetus position
Still a little bit the body I recognize
I don’t know if I could call you by the same name
An amazing opening of curtains
A dance between the veils
as mystery has its tentacles around your body
Like octopus
And you take me with you
I cannot believe it
I rebuilt myself with coral and seaweed the bones of a fish
You told me three weeks ago
“There is a big hurry; I am going to be back”
I laughed: What??
While storm was blowing in kids and house and lands
and the whole community mourned
You said: I will be back
In a whole different form
We all will be back
We sang the blood deep song in the water
Because time is so perfect now, so perfect
As we emerge out of water
And now I zoom in on you
And feel you, I let myself feel you
And after seven weeks of storm, of drought, of splitting pain and hell and fire
And loss, and disappearing and dripping disasters after I saw you,
Now..
These minerals that are so you, are distilled, and shine
The bare bones that surface
Would anybody believe me?
But there is nobody to convince
there is only you in a vacuum
In other space
Yesterday was the 49th day of your death
the day of the big release
Finally exciting bardo
The either returning or floating forever in endless beyond
But your returning is not one of ancestors
Not one of children’s grief
Or setting things straight
Kicking children in butt
Or coming back to me
Here you are in seven weeks:
Embodied future
While humans mourn in past
I am excited, soo excited
this exploring
this intense hurry to go forward
Who? Who would have thought?
You so stuck in past
So stuck in stone, and building
And old cowboymovies
So attached to your long manes
And the old fashioned banjo-music that I hated
Now catapulted forward
Stripped from all identity
And you take me there
You take me there
Over that hump
Through the tiny hole
Through death straight into birth
Like a bird in a cage
You have to be so willing to open the door of that birdcage
And let the bird fly out
So willing to know that it may never come back
But so willing to know that it might as well
What a beautiful thing
That the love of that bird
And the love of that cage
And even the love between the bars
Is strong enough that it would come back on its own
Not because you forced it to be there
Not because you imprisoned it
But because it wanted to
As you jump over planets, and moons
and suns and solar systems
Over the other side of darkness
beyond the 360 degrees of earth
To love so deeply
And be soo free
Would you ever want any other type of love with anyone in your life?
Christel Janssen
