darkness as medicine

Here’s what I want to tell you: 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.

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, asking for relief from the onslaught of cruelty and violence that fills the air. The light hushed me, said look, see how illuminated this darkness is. Rest. Write a poem. Make some tea. Soothe your mind.

Tell me, darkness says, what are your greatest fears? And I recount them. The old wounds, the sorrows, the betrayals. The fear that evil will slay the forces of good.

Now breathe, darkness says, into a slow count of four, out to a slow count of eight. Maybe dance while you’re counting and breathing. Pick up the pace. Imagine accordion music from the old country, The Ukrainian death poem. The one your ancestors wrote as the soldiers got closer to their village, guns poised. They wrote: This has happened before. It will happen again.

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

There is no fear that sweat and a compassionate visit with your mind cannot soothe.

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

I am empty. I am radiant. I am filled with the light you think you must set out seeking. You fast for five days. Chant until your throat is raw. Beg for blessings from thin gypsy thieves.

I am that blessing.

I am the word.

I am the origin of your creativity and your capacity for joy, 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 to let the off-key harmonies of fear rattle you until you find the beat so you can release 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 dissolve like a hard candy held under the tongue.

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. Adorn yourself in the love that never fails.

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