Chicagoetry: Life

Life

Life is a series of deaths:
self outlasts self outlasts self.
Yesterday remanded to the shelf,
today is the tongue of the bell.

Life is a series of deaths:
resented parents, neglected siblings,
forsaken friends finally become
what they always were: true saints.

To survive is to mourn
in series, in spasms of foul
grief and fleeting eloquence,
a mustering of animal elegance.

Clouds: down of a dove.
Dawn seeds the doves with dreams.
Day is brief, night is grief.
We awaken each morning re-born.

Life is a series of deaths:
of self, of sun, of soul.
And life is a series of songs,
a chorus of hallowed tongues.

But life is a series of deaths
within, too. That is, a stream of selves-
within-selves, neither compounding
nor compiling. Perpetually re-becoming.

Life is a billion breaths
westward leading, still proceeding.
Our selves, like waterfalls,
new every second.

Dawn is legend, dusk is myth.
Mind: a circular universe of divinity.
Cathay dusk is dawn in Carolina,
Bucktown dawn is dusk in Asia Minor.

So life is a series of deaths
and a series of re-births,
each breath a lurching toward refinement,
each death a seeding of divinity,

each birth fresh dew on a dove.

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J.J. Tindall is the Beachwood's poet-in-residence. He welcomes your comments. Chicagoetry is an exclusive Beachwood collection-in-progress.

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More Tindall:

* Music: MySpace page

* Fiction: A Hole To China

* Critical biography at e-poets.net

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