Growing-up

this is a poem about what comes next. It has been awhile since I wrote a poem and I look forward to any comments other readers may have. Thanks.

                Growing-up

 

How many times along this road?

five hundred or five-thousand?

A journey of reflex and memory,

like knowing how to tie a bow.

 

Flash of movement from dusky woods,

a fox, a dog, perhaps a frightened deer?

Too fast to register perception,

too solid to be mere illusion.

 

The car takes flight briefly,

but then remembers it is not a bird.

It shrieks an almost human scream of

grinding metal, sparks and flames.

 

No one hears my last words,

brief curse, no time for more.

A shame to enter eternity

with words so banal on my lips.

 

No long tunnels, bright lights or

departed friends coaxing me forward.

No particles of energy whirling in the cosmos

but only nothing, dark as dreamless sleep.

 

No sense of taste upon the tongue and yet,

a pungent scent of butterscotch and honey.

No eyes to capture light and yet,

a brightness somewhere out of reach.

 

A conscious urge to break my bonds;

a baby struggling to breach the womb.

Liquid flowing through my veins

 like warm blood, yet not blood.

 

I surface and am surrounded at once;

an infant in the company of elders.

They greet me though they make no sound

no need of voices, hands or faces.

 

Where restless energy once consumed,

now solid earth embraces, comforts.

Here nothing happens unforeseen

and storms are welcome as the calm.

 

The rains and rivers feed my thirst

and birds and breezes carry my thoughts.

The stars and clouds are my teachers now,

 a life of six-hundred years begins.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Reviews

[John the Baptist]

This haunting poem seems to speculate on the nature of life after death. It is not the relating of a near death experience; in fact, at one point it appears to refute the elements of that phenomenon as reported by those who have experienced it. Rather, it attempts to describe the survival of bodily death as something like a return to nature. Silent elders are mentioned, as well the scent of butterscotch and honey; otherwise, there is only the sense of embracing the earth, being fed by the rains and rivers and taught by the stars and clouds. At the end is the indication this existence will last for six hundred years. A strange vision of the afterlife here. Still, it is preferable to hellfire and damnation or being reincarnated as a slug. A thoughtful, well written piece.