Asunder

Spirit and matter in awkward dance,
Life but collusion, a waking trance,
Proteins carve out a space for one,
Child, Man, Woman, never redone,
Yet so fleeting.

Tenuous hold of mind over matter,
A brief breath, a glass that will shatter,
Ever dispersing the happy assortment,
Of particles, waves, a fated accordment,
Yet unlasting.

As mind doth protest, the body so frail,
Cohesion reneges, cell walls now fail,
As dreams, then memories like vapors flee,
Lost is the stuff that made us we,
Be flailing.

Hardening of arteries, hardening of hearts,
Fire in belly ember’s cool in fits and starts,
Slowing the dance of organs and organelles,
Muting touch, sights, sounds, and smells,
All failing.

Cytoplasmic walls fail, silver cord severs,
Proteins collapse--soul’s naked hereafters,
But love so intense can imprint the pattern,
Of the self, unbound from a darkened cavern,
Now sailing…

Where bodies not bound to the whim of cells,
Where selves are loved from and endless well,
And stories are rewritten and selves reborn,
And held again the ones once mourned,
In healing,
In hoping,
In God.

****Thinking about death, endings...