Our strange friends, those Egyptian mummies,
were buried with necklaces and fancy hats,
pots, an axe, some onions, often gold.
Rich ones got furniture.
In their luggage Viking warriors took
swords and amulets and bags of coins.
A great one would get a boat.
So what would I be buried with?
I think I’d like nothing but me.
No tools for labor or riches for commerce,
no trinkets for some mindless dalliance,
no fidget toy for under-stimulation,
no costume, no clothes at all: naked,
at my least presentable, received
into the Kingdom of Belonging.
I’ll lie still, not needing to go anywhere,
at peace with my surroundings,
attentive to the soil I lie in,
and marvel at my flesh
as it falls away layer by layer,
my faithful bones that sustained me all those years.
I’d prefer nothing to distract me from
really hearing that pure silence down there,
sensing the tug of earth
and how it moves a little in its sleep,
feeling the grit between my fingers, getting to know
the dirt I came from and am becoming.
Maybe watching as root hairs
make their mysterious way through me.
And if there enter worms:
more wondrous beings to behold—
more complicated than I thought!—
to watch their squirming, and their patient work.
Maybe without all that hardware,
without past or future,
after years of practice,
I might become fully present
to where I am.
__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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