Life, Death, and Poetry

the mindful peace of the cypress beckons,
she bows in the wind but doesn’t break,
she knows well the moments, but nothing of time
her poetry is written in presence, not words

in this business of life, of death and of poetry
today is, i think, best forgotten ~
just a figment, after all, an old locked-room mystery,
stored among a million neurons, a trillion connections,
soundproof, but for the occasional cerebral accident
with its quick crack of a gunshot fading into a yellow eye,
watching with an understandable fatalism

life, as it turns out, is a matter of imagination,
or folly, nurturing the seesaw of grief and joy,
the contrapuntal pulls of yin and yang

we can reframe, but we can’t rewrite
there are no encores

this business of life, of death and of poetry is what it is
and the past is not a salve nor the future a savior,
the same sun that warms words poemed into life
will dry our skin to leather and weld it to bone ~

moss, says the poet, will cover up our names*

it’s best then, i think, to mimic the cypress
to let go the days, the clutter and the noise,
to bow – but not snap – in the wind,
to know well the moments, but nothing of time

– Jamie Dedes

* I Died for Beauty (“Until the moss had reached our lips,/And covered up our names.”), Emily Dickinson

© 2013, poem , Jamie Dedes, All rights reserved
Photo credit ~ Amadscientist via Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

JAMIE DEDES ~ My worldly tags are poet and writer. For the past five years I’ve blogged at The Poet by Day,the journey in poem, formerly titled Musing by Moonlight.  Through the gift of poetry (mine and that of others), I enter sacred space.