When death comes

There's much to be said for having reading books lying about the house in oportune moments.

The thoughts and emotions of our impending departure are stirring stuff in the depths. Last night I was able to put words to one of the deeper stirrings. There's an tension on the shoreline of my soul where the outside expectations of the world meet my hopes and dreams. 

...what do I want to do/be? 

...what do I feel others want me to do/be?

...how then, shall I live?

This tension is a fact of life, but against the backdrop of these questions, this poem is not so much about death as it is about living. 

I've said enough.

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When death comes

Mary Oliver

When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn;
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse

to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;
when death comes
like the measles-pox;

when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,

and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth
tending as all music does, toward silence,

and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.

When it's over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it is over, I don't want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.

I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.