A Parting Gift OR Mind-Body-Spirit, Bottom Line

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._N._Taber

A new poem today as I work my way through New Year blues, and try to rise above them. Oh, I will get there, but it becomes so much harder as the years pass...

As regular readers well know, I do not subscribe to any religion although I think of myself as a pantheist relating closer to Earth Mother. I was once asked if I feared death as I envisage no Heaven. Well, I don't fear death as such, only any pain that might come first. The human spirit, though, lives on in the hearts and minds of any it has touched during a person's lifetime and it's that posthumous consciousness I see as a kind of afterlife, our parting gift to a common humanity of which, for better or worse,we play a part all our lives.

Many if not most of us look back on our lives as we grow old, good times and bad, wondering if we could have done better, and if we have made any real difference at all; questions to which few of us have all the answers, only shadows; We can but hope our being here has made some difference to someone, somewhere, and for the better.

A PARTING GIFT or MIND-BODY-SPIRIT, BOTTOM LINE

As we grow old,

so, too, find us chasing shadows

across the mind;

memories come to haunt us

for good and ill;

dreamy days, nightmare days,

in-between days,

mind-body-spirit left to make sense

of it all

As we grow old,

years like passers-by try to read

our changing faces,

leave us asking of time and space

just how much

of all they see (or think they see)

is fact, wishful thinking,

or home truths we’ve spent a lifetime

hiding from

As we grow old,

our shadows deepen, linger longer

as if daring us

to catch them like butterflies

in a net,

no harm meant, but pleasure spent

in showing nature

who’s king-pin, aware of Earth Mother

looking on

As we grow old,

so tearfully we’ll recall butterfly wings

on a bedroom wall,

rare species, a collector’s boast

for catching the most

in Class 3 B, earning a gold star,

one in the eye

for living things bright and beautiful, great

and small

Ah, but butterflies

enjoy but a brief life span, while old age

(if chasing shadows)

homes us in on splendid dawns,

starry nights,

sunny days of love, laughter,

family and friends,

where a rolling landscape of mind-body-spirit

never ends

Mortality, it catches up

with all live things, its kinder shadows

lending wings

to rise above time and space,

access realms

of least explored consciousness

and spirituality;

passport to eternity by way of life’s parting gift

to humanity

Copyright R. N. Taber 2020