RELIEF IN RELIFE

Does evening raise a fear of no more dawns?

Does autumn’s chill forever kill our lawns?

If not, then why dread gray hair in a mirror?

If dawns and lawns recur, is death to fear?

Is body all I am, a soft robot

conditioned by blind chance, then left to rot?

Is heaven just a slide shone on the sky

to keep believers honest till they die?

To think extinction ends our too-short life—

to think a void replaces child and wife—

to think a shroud blanks out all consciousness—

all far too grim for me, I must confess.

I’m reassured from deep in bone and heart

that when I and my body come to part,

I’ll slip it off and leave it like a coat,

retaining what I know, but free to float.

Our breath comes in, goes out, and so do we

who end each earthly life, but then are free

to roam bright inner realms with opened eyes

which see through physicality’s bleak lies.

We thrive in heaven’s symphony of mind

uncounted blissful years, until we find

we thirst again to join the physical

where atoms quickly teach what’s practical.

Like gravity, a pull of destiny

reels in our soul from near infinity

and helps us choose as home some mother’s womb—

what most call birth, our trammeled soul deems tomb.

Then choice and aftermath on earth are learned—

like school, where each promotion must be earned.

With open-hearted deeds we all progress;

with selfish acts we duly retrogress.

If death is no more end than western sun—

if Soul appears through bodies, one by one—

then life is no more opposite of death

than breathing is the opposite of breath.