At the end of December, I had the heart-breaking and tender gift of being with my mother as she took her last breath. I am forever changed by the profound silence that filled her room immediately after she died. It was like an ocean of peace, engulfing and permeating everything, including my body. Perhaps it was love set free. I felt it as the thick stillness out of which our lives, and all the cycles of the living earth, unfold into this world and return in time. I found a poem this week, which put words and images to this silent peace I experienced with my mother’s passing - a deep and rhythmic pulse of flows from the center of the night.
In the spirit of night wetness on the “beaches of our souls,” Barbara (and Peri)
Water Night (excerpt)
If you open your eyes, night opens doors of musk, the secret kingdom of the water opens flowing from the center of the night.
And if you close your eyes, a river fills you from within, flows forward, darkens you: night brings its wetness to beaches in your soul.
~ Octavio Paz ~
Early Poems 1935-1955 Translation by Muriel Rukeyser