MMMM...world. Air. Spring. Sun. THEY'RE BACK. I don't think they ever went away, I just had vacated to another universe in my mind for awhile--and that universe was not all that great--- almost felt like the whole Being John Malvovich thing for awhile, but then again not really. Anyways-- I'm here and now that I'm back on the farm, EVERYBODY'S back. The rain, the birds, the geraniums are erupting, and I am at the edge of my seat waiting for the Japanese eggplant and the Kohl robi to shoot their bodies upright and glisten mightily. They are teaching me so much skill in how to posture oneself towards the sun, how to grow courageously, rooted, and to be confident. Sometimes I even imagine that all of them-- even the cosmos flowers, the broccoli florets and even Maze and Blaze the goats-- that the plants would uproot themselves and dance over to me with the goats and bunnies and chickens-- we'd all dance to Donovan Frankenreiter's "Free" and then roll down the mountain together. Welcome to Betty's imaginative world of life.
Speaking of Betty, I have had major bladder issues since referring to myself as Betty here in Appalachia. Is it a mind trick, body? I mean just because I name you BETTY doesn't mean you get to act like a old timey fart. Please, God, I don't want to wear Depends at the age of 23.
Spring also blows in a different sort of aroma in the whole hospital environment. I have had a couple of patients anticipating death pass away these first few weeks of spring, and it's such a different sort of graceful peace that tunes the room. I remember one sweet older woman who had passed through a grueling grips to breathe with continuous retractions and gasping with a 40% Venti mask on. From course chest expansions to a slow, teetering sort of calmness, her life seemed to have dissipated from within her own skin. Her body lied in an aching stillness as blazing sun rays peaked themselves through the windows, kindling light towards her form. It was re-illuminating each of her features-- as if the sun was tracing her being once again to her frame. The wind howled against the walls-- blown to shatter. The family, friends stared, hoping to see. And they must have looked for what might have been forever. Looking, looking. But we all knew. We just knew we didn't know. It's one of those seeing moments when they found jewels in the mud, stars in the sun, and sweetness in the salt water. The woman reminded me of my own grandma--- as she waded out her days in my room back in Georgia. Her personality dripping from her own sweat, speaking more than words. She was done chasing anything down, and the life force was freeing up inside her. The link between living and being dead thinner, and thinner until in her face and body and mere movement, you recognize finely the beauty of having come through.
Most of my good friends here are dead authors, just waiting for me, and actually all of us, to take their words to rewrite something out for a new generation. But one of my most special friends my grandma had told me about--- she used to speak at the university in Atlanta on her thoughts of life and how to live. Here is one of my most prized poems, as I remember it recently with these patients in these early days of spring. It's called "When Death Comes."
When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn;
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse
to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;
when death comes like the measle-pox;
when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,
I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?
And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea
and I consider eternity as another possibility,
and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,
and each name a comfortable music in the mouth,
tending, as all music does, toward silence,
and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.
When it's over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.
When it's over, I don't want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.
I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.
