Saying goodbye

Last day of the year 2012. A lot of flourishing; three deaths. The first photo is the aftermath of last week’s cactus blossoms used to honour Helen Gee. Hopefully, seen as appropriate for signaling the ending of one phase and the potential that lies within the New Year.

Along with the abundance of goodness over the past twelve months, this year did see the deaths of three friends and my attendance at two of their funerals. Watching the bereaved partners of these three women, and wanting to speak to something within all of us, I have chosen the following poem to both mark the closing of 2012 and, perhaps, usher in the beginning of a New Year that helps hold the past in an embrace of the physical with the spiritual.

The Friendship Inside Us

Why the mouth? Why is it the mouth we put to mouth
at the final moments? Why not the famous groin?
Because the groin is far away.
The mouth is close up against the spirit.
We couple desperately all night before setting out
for years in prison. But that is the body’s goodbye.
We kiss the person we love last thing before
the coffin is shut, because it is our being
touching the unknown. A kiss is the frontier in us.
It is where the courting becomes the courtship,
where the dancing ends and the dance begins.
The mouth is our chief access to the intimacy
in which she may reside. Her mouth is the porch
of the brain. The forecourt of the heart.
The way to the mystery enthroned. Where we meet
momentarily amid the seraphim and the powers.

Jack Gilbert