At the end of the year I shall think about the dead –
death and the dead, thousands of thousands
who should not be dead but alive but are not. 
They are not here. We have lost them
and they will not return to us, not in this land
in this realm of creatures moving among shadows.

What do they see, the dead who lonely died
in sanitized sick beds, surrounded not
by their family or friends but tubes and screens
pulsing beeping whirring digital machines;
by sacred scared nurses who little knew  
of the lives they led in these exhausted wheezing bodies?
And what do they see who, without tender care, lay
in their homes, trembling and confused, and then go away?
What do they see, now that they are no more with us
no more living in the lovely and fertile land of home?

They look back, moments on their death beds,
and on their away journey, to where they lived
to see the heartaches of who walked with them,
sang or danced with them, and even, even
birds on branches who saw them through windows.
Now they see with death’s eyes the consoling beauty,
the inconsolable transience of frail human life
passing by as if on sailing ships and night trains.
They have another journey ahead of them.
Their hearts, the hearts of the dead, feel
the weight of their passing away and know
there is nothing more they can do but love, 
hold dear all they knew or forgot or never knew.

It is the land of the lost they leave as they go
into the swirl of the planet’s swing among the stars.
Yet, all is not lost to them. They know and remember.
More even than love perhaps, they forgive. 
What more can they to do but forgive – all of it!
Let it slip slide away into the jeweled dark night –
the imperfections, injustices, violations
inflicted by everyone who little understood
though they tried and tired themselves in trying
hoping for their own moments of sweet love and grace.
Even the blue and green world confounded them
for they could not possess or fathom how gracious,
lovely, and holy was the place that held their crib and coffin.

They see what in life they could not see.
Overwhelmed in death they mourn for the living,
contemplate suffering – all they loved,
who loved them not, each day seeking to become real,
to heal what in them was lost and was broken.

What more for the dead but to see and in seeing
to stretch disappearing hands to all –
all who gave them life, who came before them,
generations of souls who stopped a moment
to look back and wept for those who remained,
comforted them in their heartsick grieving
and breathed on them one last breath
their final gift, their last token of life and
breathless, walked off into the shadowless light.

______________________________________________________________________________________

Portland, Oregon – December 30, 2020

“…and all such things must be utterly clear to the dead. They have finally left the problematical cloudy earthly and human sphere.  I have a hunch that in life you look outward from your ego, your center.  In death you are at the periphery looking inward.”  (Saul Bellow, Humboldt’s Gift, p. 10; Penguin Books, 2008.)