Aging, Revelation, and a Lengthening Vine

Aging is an education in semiotics.
Every ache, a symbol, every pain, a sign,
the set, accumulating and advancing
toward some cliff-dive over the horizon.

But life can be lived in a day, says the Saint,
So does it matter when you die?
Here, now, later, all the same?

No, I do not go gentle, I rage, I rave, like Dylan Thomas,
and my culture backs me up, counsels: steady on,
hang in—and so death retains its subterranean edict,
instead of raising its stratospheric question.

But in the closing years of circumstance over will,
and in the fog of a near-forgotten faith, I changed course,
(which was grace, not achievement), and I sought out
that angel of death, wrestled the entire night.

And it was almost comforting, to limp like that;
to confirm the advertised secret of mystics,
that death could be a (contextual) companion.

“Contextual,” because I don’t want to sound morbid,
or selfish in this, as though my death
would not touch those close to me.

That’s the truer sorrow: losing someone
we care for more than ourselves.
The sorrow lucky people live with.

There’s weird-magic about these moments,
when faith merges with imagination,
and revelation dawns. 
It’s like shedding a skin.

There’s a matrix of Love behind all life,
including its shattering; yet how astonishing,
like a gleeful shriek from childhood,
this sudden knowing, against evidence and achievable knowledge,
that Love sustains all.

Still, none of this prevents relapse.
And here I have the image of a cicada casing
after its moulting; how my own shell, with its prisons of fear,
self-interests, and pettiness, is always waiting for my return:
and O, look, how well it fits, as though I’d never left!

But one blithe afternoon, believe me,
language melted away and I sunk
into the genesis of a rich bewilderment:
the denouement of an unfurling leaf,
the comprehension of a lengthening vine.