darkness as medicine

Here’s what I want to tell you: the Japanese monks and nuns write poems as they lay dying. Japanese death poems. You can look it up.

What do they say? Some version of I am here at the edge of unknowing. It is dark. It is light. The light is within the dark. There is no separation any longer. It is peaceful here in this not knowing. I wish you could know it. You will one day. Happy sailing.

I think it is time to write my own Japanese death poem…  a New York City death poem, not because I am dying this moment although who knows, but because these last few months have been filled with the densest dark and the lightest light.

The light did not come because I called out. The light hushed me, said look, see how illuminated this darkness is. Rest. Write a poem. Make some tea. Soothe your mind.

There. Was that so bad?

Tell me, darkness says, what are your greatest fears? And I recount them one two three four the old standbys, the New York City death poem. The old wounds, the sorrows, the betrayals.

Now breathe, darkness says, in to a slow count of four, out to a slow count of eight. Maybe do a little dance while you’re counting and breathing. Pick up the pace. Imagine accordion music from the old country, The Ukrainian death poem. Now that one really has a beat.

Sweat and taste your tears. Let the salt write its own poem on your skin.

Are you still scared? No. Of course not. There is no fear a good sweat and a compassionate visit with your mind can’t cure.

Listen, darkness says. I am the birthplace of love, of creativity, of every new child emerging from between the legs of every laboring woman.

I am the sigh of the wind through the aspens in autumn, the sea scrubbing stones on the shore.

I am empty. I am radiant. I am filled with the light you think you must set out seeking. Fast for five days. Endless chanting. Begging for blessings from thin gypsy thieves.

I am the blessing.

I am the word.

I am the cradle of your own emergence. Sit and be still. Place your hand on your thumping heart. What can we say about this terror that has followed you into my arms?

We can say that you are alive. That you are here in fleshy flesh to let the off key harmonies of fear rattle you until you find the beat and you can tap out the rhythm of terror on the floor, tap it out on drums with spoons, with rocks, tap it out until it is the whoosh of your blood circulating. Until your terror and your fear of darkness become sweet like a hard candy held under the tongue, like a soft ripe mango.

Eat me, terror says.

Metabolize me.

Swim with me.

Devour me.

Stop resisting the pull.

Open your grip.

Open your jaw. Give in give up go away from the room you entered. Come back through the window climb down through the chimney rename yourself remake yourself. Dress yourself in darkness, in starlight, in eternity. Dress yourself in love.

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Read more stories like this in my book The Ripening: Essays on Love, Loss, Marriage and Aging available on Amazon.