Beg Life
We drink, ’til distant friends arrive
rise out of range, loom ghostly
recede again.
A thought walks in, asks
and what of life?
“..aging, sea change, choosing”
always choosing
one more Dutch door,
then drifting, drifting
toward another endless chore.
We walk this lunar beach - beg life
from birth to earth’s end,
to learn what good come from this, when
despair will reign the soul to cry
&
we die to love,
we weep for joy -
our worst our best,
we love to death.
Life’s a beach
combed clean,
unless you know the time of birth
of a single wave.
Spartan thoughts fuel our bloated bodies
engorged on luxuries,
double helpings of a thin line drawn too fat
reflects mourning - too many mirrored warnings -
and oh God we beg for more
we beg for more
&
life’s a drama
then we die -
beached whales
done in by our own wailings.
There is no end to beginnings
start line or finish line,
we’re all finished
in the end,
we do not heed Heaven’s plea -
save the plankton!
Janet Leigh
2 comments:
When I first read this poem on Janet's blog, POETMEISTER, I had a strong response to it. I share it with you now:
BEG LIFE pulled me into it, made me whirl with your possibilites, your contradictions and profunity. It is a dark travelling, and makes me want to circle back and slap a label over its title, retitling it CELEBRATE LIFE.
Yes, we all do “walk the lunar beach”, but regardless of your religious or spiritual bent, realize within the core of you that life just does not end with “death”. Death is a doorway. Death is a shucking of mortal coil, or dysfunctional body and carnate misalignment. Death is a transition only; nothing to fear, nothing to scare the timid with, nothing to use as raw manipulation of the other directed. Soul is the most powerful of universal engergies. It is “energy” itself, and energy cannot be destroyed, only transferred or transformed or reassembled.
I love the line,”unless you know the time of birth for a single wave.” But then waves are active, and shed part of their essence on the beach ad infinitum, but they, none of them, are truly disconnected from ocean, or from sky, and the clouds recyle the salty brime, one continuous cycle and movement into the clouds until their bellies are dark and fecund, only to spill back to the sea, and we, like waves, are never completely disconnected from the universe, from the cyclic nature of reincarnation and life between lives, and multi-dimensional shifts.
Likewise loved your line,”there is no end to beginnings,” so wonderfully and metaphysically accurate. So enjoy the lesson of your immediate life, and plug into the infinite energy of your inner medatative state, as you move hand in hand with your soul on its journey through the universe.
Glenn
Yours is such a beautiful write-up and metaphysical interpretation of my poem, Glenn. I'm honored you think it worthy to put up on your own blog. Everything I've written that you've put up here on your blog looks different and new to me. It's like I'm reading someone else's work and making little asides to myself and lots of ooooo's and ahhhhh's then suddenly realizing at the end of it that it's something I wrote. It's such a rush. I'm astounded by your ability to grab thoughts, ideas, and feelings from my work and feed it back to me in a way that I could never do, but know in my heart is exactly what I meant. Does this make any sense? To meet a person over the internet that has the ability to breathe as one with me is rare and exhilarating. I think it's one of those "my soul attests to your soul" type of thingymajig. heh heh
Now I've gone and spoilt it haven't I? lol
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