Message

In my last years I swallowed
what I was supposed to,
drank not what was forbidden,
moved as I was advised to move,
and nevertheless ended up dead.

Can’t speak of what 
that’s like — there are contracts,
and it’s different for all anyway.
I’ll say this:
nothing about the passage itself

should terrify you.
It is as simple as changing
clothes, easy as a dressing room,
calm as a Saturday morning 
without mirrors, with nowhere to go.

That said, here are things to consider
before you cross over.  Kindness
to others, yes.  Taking stands
against preventable agony, yes.
Relating, loving, speaking passion,

of course.  But also,
there is a remarkable
emphasis here on whether or not
you occasionally stopped 
in the middle of the day to listen

to the day — to all of it
from truck snorts to humming bees.
You were expected to hear the world
as a symphony now and then;
they never tell us that soon enough.

So — go do that.  Go stop the moments
and sit with them.  It will prepare you
for much of what it’s like here — cannot
say more than that about it, except that
it’s not at all a bad existence.

It’s nothing like life to be dead.  
There’s more singing, if you can believe 
that.  There’s also more silence. You
are always comfortable.  You 
are always fine — it’s going to be fine.