Death’s Gate

No words cover the experience.
No time undoes the feeling.
In love having fullness.
Only to be left releasing:
A shovel, a handful of dirt and the hole left behind.

In love, in sharing: becoming angels.
Living itself: is the wing beat of being an angel.
Even when forced to face death
Coming down to find the ground.

No words fulfill this hole.
Not enough dirt hide the remains,
within the mind, memory and visions
which as if alive
continue to play out.

In peace
I wish you peace
to say in oneness
Death is a reflection
Looking back from the depths
towards the light
where we all are one.

This is truth
The reason no words work
in that Death is the merging,
Becoming alight
with the Tao.

Casey Kochmer May 2008

Written for a friend who lost a child.

Personal Thoughts About the Poem and regarding Death

I have died,
Shedding my bones
Embracing it
as the larger whole
as a larger truth

People fear it: due to ego
Not wanting to lose self
Not wanting to lose connections

This is very ironic since in death:
we connect to the whole.
We dive back into every expression
of what we are.

No need exists ever to rush into death
No reason justifies fearing death
It is as it will be.

In the now
Spin within the joy of living.
Death sorts itself out
Diving into the light that it is.

Taoism teaches how to embrace death, not as life and not as an ending. To a Taoist death represents a matrix of transformation.

More thoughts about dealing with death of a loved one.