Wheel of Fortune

April 13

Sitting

When you sit with someone dying
your presence is a river
that saturates and carries you
both
to the far shore of nowhere.
You are not in control.
This river winds
between inhalation, exhalation
and in the slight gap between
spills open to eternity.

When you sing with someone dying
"row, row, row your boat"
or Corelli's "Miserere"
you set the random wheels
of dense black holes spinning.
Space-time wobbles like a drum.

When you pray with someone dying
you must be bold
and brandish a sword
before the threshold of Paradise.
Allah, Jesus, Buddha, Krishna, Ein-Soph
please find this soul
to be as slight as a feather.
May her karmic debts
be paid with honey.

I actually think this works better with the last stanza as the first, and the first, last, but I was too lay to retype it.