How Dying Works Poem by Alla Bozarth

It takes different
degrees of time
for each soul
to ripen.

When it is ready
to dropp from one
dimension into another,
the sac of matter
dies away from it
to release it.

Spinning or
throwing forth or
flowing or sliding
away, the sac returns
to earth, air, fire
and water, and when
Earth herself dies
everything here
will go back
into stars.

Meanwhile, the individual
soul being born into
a new form becomes
a kind of supernova
star, gigantic, beautiful,
devastatingly bright,
hot with Godfire
as it explodes into
Everywhere.

Other souls who vibrate
to this light’s same music
through love or likeness
become opened, and by
magnetic resonance and
attraction, shards
of the dying person’s
soulfire pierce the souls
of others.

So we say our hearts
are broken and we do not
know ourselves for a time,
while we incorporate these
piercings of the beloved.

This is why it hurts
and this is how we become
opened and larger and lighter
ourselves, for we carry
these shards within us
forever.

The more we lose,
the more open, large and
bright we become.

When we explode
into the Infinite
we are more than ourselves
already. We are many.
We are all who have become
a part of us in love
and all who will become.
It is all true.

Heaven is not a there.
Heaven is not somewhere.
Heaven is now, here,
streaming through.

This poem is from the books This Mortal Marriage: Poems of Love,
Lament and Praise by Alla Renée Bozarth, iUniverse 2003 and
This is My Body: Praying for Earth, Prayers from the Heart by
Alla Renée Bozarth, iUniverse 2004. All rights reserved.