Go Now

            

               Gary  Snyder

               You don’t want to read this,
               reader,

               be warned, turn back
               from the darkness,
               go now.

               — about death and the

               death of a lover — it’s not some vague meditation

               or a homily, not irony,

               no god or enlightenment or

               acceptance — or struggle — with the

               end of our life,

               it’s about how the eyes

               sink back and the teeth stand out

               after a few warm days.

               Her last

               breath, and I still wasn’t ready
               for that breath, that last, to come
               at last. After ten long years.

               So thin that the joints showed through,
               each sinew and knob

               Shakyamuni coming down from the mountain
               after all that fasting
               looked plumper than her.

                         “I met a walking

                                   skeleton, his name was Thomas Quinn”

               we sang
               back then

               she could barely walk, but she did.

               I gave her the drugs every night and we always
               kissed sweetly and fiercely after the push;
               kissed hard, and our teeth clacked, her
               lips dry, fierce, she was all
               bones, breath and eyes.

               We hadn’t made love in eight years
               she had holes that drained all the time
               in her sides, new ones that came,
               end game — and she talked when she could.

               Daughters, mother, sister, cousins, friends
               in and out of the room. Even the
               hardened hospice nurse in tears.

               “Goodnight sweetheart, well it’s time to go.”
               our duet, cheek to cheek,
               for that last six weeks

               She watched the small nesting birds
               in the tree just outside.

               Then she died.

               I sponged her and put on a blouse
               with sleeves to cover gaunt elbows,
               a long gauzy skirt
               like Mumtaz Mahal —

               I was alone. Then they came.

               One daughter cried out
               “She’s a corpse!” and stood fixed
               outside on the deck. It was warm.

               I was alone. Then they came.

               The third day

               the van from the funeral home came for her,
               backing up close to the door,

               I helped roll her into the sheets
               slid on a gurney and wheeled to the car
               and they drove up the rough gravel hill
               our family group standing there silent
               as I turned, held my breath,
               closed my eyes to the sky.

               Five days of heat and they called me,
               just Kai and me, to come witness cremation.
               It cost extra. Only the two of us

               wanted to be there, to see.

               We followed the limousine
               through a concrete-yard with hop
               through a gate beyond that
               to an overgrown

               sheet metal warehouse that once was a body shop
               to the furnace and chimney room,
               it looked like a kiln for a potter,
               there were cardboard coffins
               stacked up   empty around.

               The young man at a desk and a table
               filling out papers, sweating, as we
               set out the incense and bell, the candle,
               and I went to the light cardboard coffin
               and opened the lid. The smell hit me like a blow.
               I had thought that the funeral home
               had some sort of cooling
               like a walk-in

               maybe they did. But it didn’t much help.
               Her gaunt face more sunken, dehydrated,
               eyes still open but dull, teeth bigger, her body
               her body for sure, my sweet lady’s body
               down to essentials, and I placed two books on
               her breast, books she had written,

               to send on her way, looked again
                         and again,
               and closed it   and nodded.

               He rolled it up close, slid the

               box in the furnace, locked down the door,

               like loading a torpedo

               we burned incense and chanted the

               texts for impermanence and all beings who have lived

               or who ever will yet; things writ only in magic

               and just for the dead — not for you dear reader —

               watching the temperature gauge on the furnace,

               firing with propane, go steadily up.

               So now we can go.

               Maybe I know where she’s gone —

               Kai and I one more time

               take a deep breath

               — this is the price of attachment —

               “Worth it. Easily worth it —”

               Still in love, being there,
               seeing and smelling and feeling it,
               thinking farewell.

               worth even the smell.

             

                 


               This present moment
               that lives on

               to become

               long ago

                    counterpointpress.com/dd-product/this-present-moment