Mortality

Well, dying, after all, is no big deal —

People do it all the time

It is the logical conclusion

of the primal lie

that says you can’t have

that which you most want,

that says you have to suffer,

that says you have to settle,

that says you really don’t deserve

to be the essence of yourself,

which, when realized,

brings unremitting joy

It is the lie that holds us in captivity,

Captivity which always

assigns another tyrant.

keeps us struggling in servitude,

as long as we believe it, 

with bouts of high stakes cat and mouse

played with despair

The slow or sudden pain of this

brings us towards death

(No living thing endures without its freedom)

We will choose to go there too

until the moment we become convinced

the lie has never owned us

And our own truth bears us witness

that life has boundless rounds of joy to give,

That it's our true calling

to be our wild selves fully

and then we know

we shall not die, but live.

©Wendy Mulhern

October 20, 2014