Birth...Death....Birth Poem by Jan Freundschuh

My mother, whose rhythms were so regular
That she knew what day I'd be born,
Said I beat her by half an hour;
I was in such a hurry!

Why was I enthused in this,
This total paradigm shift,
Yet drag my feet
Against the very thought
Of dying?

Everyone born goes through this,
This metamorphosis,
Still the modern world of materialism,
Says....dread this loss of life....
And I do, my God, I do.

Storytelling is to blame.
Where's the story of death as birth?
As paradigm shift?
As oak unrolling out of
Acorn?
....Freedom from its womb,
Womb now but a husk.

Are we acorns?

Or the precious thing inside
That deeply craves expansion?

We need our candles lit
And glowing.
It's all the light we have
Until the dawn comes
To our eyes,
And we toss away candle stub.

Can candle not conceive of dawn?
This is due to our storytelling,
Or lack thereof!

Here's a shocking thing:
The hungry caterpillar
Spins himself cocoon
Then to his shock
He liquefies! ! !
(Look it up)

Intelligence remains
In this caterpillar soup
And it knows how to form
A butterfly
That breaks free
And flies the coop.

How can we act in our dreams;
We walk, drive cars, even fly,
When we are not using our bodies....
We leave them behind on our beds,
Just lying.

Tell me more stories like these
Help me diminish my fear.
Today's world is materialistic
It has blinded me to continuity....
And has closed me against the invisible.
Scientists talk of 'germs'.....even 'atoms'
-Such things I'm expected to believe.....

But not things that are not spoken of.

And so we're in need of storytellers.
And this is why we need words:

'Metamorphosis'
'Expansion'
'Oak Tree Latent Inside'
'The Warmth of the Dawn'.