When I pulled a slim volume of poetry off the shelf and read the following description on the back, I knew I had to read it. “In Kim Dower’s fourth collection, Sunbathing on Tyrone Power’s Grave, death has never felt so alive!” How could I resist a death that feels alive? The first poem in the book that I flipped to was this:
Completion
We like to cross things off our lists.
The wedding gift has been shipped.
Groceries in the fridge. Book written.
Dying is the last item to be checked off the list.
I wish I could cross it off myself as I was
in the act. I’d insert a pink ink cartridge
in my special Pilot, draw a withering line
through the word die (maybe a smiley face?)
as my last breath left my lungs. Be there for me
if and when, as I might need you to hand me
my pen. Hand me my pen.
The poem surprised me, in part because I, too, have been putting death on a checklist, along with eggs, toilet paper, coffee, gardening, and calling Nicole. (I need to call Nicole!) But I don’t mean death exactly, not as Dower does, but rather, thinking about death. Because I’m trying to be a better Buddhist, and thinking about death is an important part of Buddhist practice. There’s even an app for this called WeCroak, which I downloaded two days ago. Now WeCroak dings me 5 times a day and reminds me that I will die. And each time it dings, I think about Claire Bateman’s poem, “LXI,” from her miraculously beautiful book, The Locals, that begins:
LXI
In this realm, most of the citizens have become aficionados of their own death scenes, traveling repeatedly into the future to
snap photographs from various angles, host parties, or engage in religious ceremonies, whether or not the dying version of any
particular self is still a believer.
But sometimes when I practice with WeCroak, I worry that I’m not doing it right. For Buddhists death is supposed to be an opportunity to transform from the proverbial caterpillar into a butterfly. So thinking about death should be a way of thinking about this transformation, just as Dower does in her lovely poem, “Confessions of a Butterfly.”
Confessions of a Butterfly
I stuffed myself with milkweed
in my adorable larva stage
making my wings large
bright orange. I’m desperate
for people to admire
my delicate beauty and believe
I bring them good luck.
With my life span as short
as a rose’s, I don’t waste my time
fluttering through the fields
mingling with the flowers.
I plan to follow the heat, echo
in its warmth, power straight
into the sun, feel each ray slash
my wings, burn them to powder,
light up the world.
After reading this poem, I tried and failed to imagine myself as a lowly being changing into a winged one, and then lighting up the world. I think I am lacking what Claire Bateman calls Epiphany Insurance. As she explains in her poem, "XXXI:"
XXXI
Question: What do the following inhabitants of this realm, strangers to one another, have in common?
a. the scholar shredding his dissertation
b. the scientist scowling at the printout of her test results
c. the songwriter unable to move past the first stanza
Answer: Each has neglected to maintain payments for the Individual Epiphany Insurance, allowing coverage to lapse. Thus, despite the severity of their woes, no one will offer them even the most perfunctory expression of sympathy.
Whatever the cause, I find it difficult to think of the dead as liberated beings. If the dead could talk, I imagine they'd tell me how much they wish they were still here, eating ice cream or making love or just shooting the breeze, as they do in this flash fiction story by Meg Pokrass, from her new book, The Dog Seated Next to Me:
There are so many dead people in her life, especially in this house. They float around and exaggerate. They want to see something sexy. That nightgown? they say. They miss eating berries. They’re sure she’ll be okay. They say wonderful things about what you might do here on earth. They should have taken more lovers, had more beach weekends, seen more foreign films. They ask for autographs from the living.
And there is also this engaging flash fiction piece by Pokrass, which is more about absence than death.
What Are You Doing, Friend?
His voice tender and sore. Not angry, like the photo. Not turning on this moment.
The woman lives in there still. What are you doing? she whispers, because he is not the him that can be spoken to.
This is surely a ghost. She walks around the house barefoot, looking at stacks of problems. Touching his absence.
What are you doing, friend? she might ask his light blue eyes that look like birds.
I love the mystical feel of that poem, and of all the poems I've mentioned here. I sometimes worry that I lack any mystical visions. That’s one of the reasons I’ve been taking classes in Buddhism. (I’m a repeat student—I never progress.) Last week, we had a guest-speaker from Tibet named Tenzin who tried to simplify his lesson by fitting Buddhist principles into the story of the three pigs. The three pigs, he said, represent the three steps one goes through when becoming enlightened.
The first pig, he said, is the piggy who becomes happy with himself after meditating. And he’s so happy being happy. He feels great. He can just sit there on his zafu, all blissed out. (Oh, to be the first piggy!)
But then, alas, one day he becomes the second piggy. This happens when he thinks of the other pigs, the other less happy pigs. He worries about them . . . Maybe his heart even aches for them. I’m not entirely sure what he does with his newfound awareness of the unhappy pigs in the world. I think he just sits there, dwelling on their condition. Maybe he writes poems about them.
But then, one day he turns into the third piggy, and he seeks to save all the other pigs. How he does this, I don’t know. Maybe he becomes a Buddha-pig. Or a Dalai Lama-pig. Maybe he teaches everyone to sit on his or her cushion and become a pig like piggy number 1.
Now that I reread what I have written, I don’t think I have the story right. I asked my friend, Anne, a fellow student and Buddhist practitioner, and she said that the third piggy is actually a transcendent pig. Because he’s free. He has no bodily limitations. He might even be a bodiless pig.
A bodiless pig? I give up. Now, all I can think of is Edson’s famous poem, “A Performance at Hog Theater.”
A Performance at Hog Theater
There was once a hog theater where hogs performed
as men, had men been hogs.
One hog said, I will be a hog in a field which has
found a mouse which is being eaten by the same hog
which is in the field and which has found the mouse,
which I am performing as my contribution to the
performer’s art.
Oh let’s just be hogs, cried an old hog.
And so the hogs streamed out of the theater crying,
only hogs, only
hogs . . .
Please get to the list item “call Nicole!”
Love, Nicole
Posted by: Nicole Santalucia | September 22, 2019 at 03:59 PM