Making an Inventory [by Lera Auerbach]

 

Bruegel's Sky - Fragment [Photo by Lera Auerbach]

To live, one must make an inventory:

Item 1: The sky. It is everywhere.

 

Item 2: People. There are many of them.

 

Item 3: It is hard to believe, but there are still birds. They occupy space between people and the sky. Sometimes they touch the heavens; sometimes they touch the earth.

 

Item 4: Conceptual thinking.

 

Item 5: Garbage cans. Discarded objects, personal treasures no longer loved such as broken limbs of dolls.

 

Item 6: Cars. Be aware of them.

 

Item 7: The rest of the world.

 

The dead are watching the shadows caused by light. 

Inside of each shadow, a small invisible death is practicing the art of dying.

 

Comments

[Joel Weiner]

Thanks much for this excellent insight poem, Lera Auerbach.

Into 70 yrs of living, now, i find myself thinking more about death and dying as older relatives and friends pass away. But there's hope if "the dead are watching the shadows caused by light" as this poet writes.

I take from it that after death, we do not cease awareness, but are immersed within life itself on an ethereal plane of consciousness. Might this notion be so implicit that it rings explicitly true for each of us. Caught within the shadows of death and dying , fear it not, as we become unto light.

[Emily Fragos]

"Sometimes they touch the heavens; sometimes they touch the earth."

Lera Auerbach, you take my breath away. You are a genius of poetic revelation. You render me speechless.

Thank you for the sublime, the beautiful birds "that occupy space between people and the sky."

Every word a vision.

[Connections NYT]

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