My Death Was A Quiet Event Poem by Patrick White

946 / 834
Patrick White

Patrick White

Campbell River, British Columbia, Canada

My Death Was A Quiet Event

Rating: 5.0


My death was a quiet event.
I entered the abyss with all
the constituents of the first sign of life
to give voice to the silence
that’s been ripening within me for years.

Green bough. Dead branch. Same song.
The apple falls. The moon blossoms.
Everytime we open them, the worlds
sprout from our eyes like seeds.

Close them and it’s an excuse to dream
of sleepwalking on stars like the firmament
of our own breath expiring
like a vapour of light on the autumn air,
a tale of smoke, a road of ghosts,
the purple passage of a fragrance
from the fires of life that bloom
out of the void like stars and wildflowers
deep within where we cast the shadows of the mirages
we are. Poppies in a wheatfield. Fires

in the desert like red-shifting stars burning
with the life of meaning as if shining itself
were meaning enough to engender us
like the myths of our own imaginations.

Life’s not solid, it’s as real as any nightmare
that never came true, any dream that ever kept
its vow to you. Grow vast. Teach space
not to be confined by itself. Grow deep.
Encourage time to root in your starmud
like a river system of lightning flowing
into the great night seachange of your awareness

as wise as the salmon are, we’re not fish
swimming upstream in a waterclock to be
born again to copulate and die. We’re
the sacred syllables of sparrows in a fountain
washing the dust of the worlds off our wings
after many flights, joy-riding the wind,
after many ice-ages in the hourglass of winter,
like the crumbs of a dream from our eyes
when we wake up to the fruits of life
we keep sowing in our graves like the silver bows
of these lifeboats that keep on ploughing
the seas of the moon as the siloes of our afterlives
are filled behind us with the windfall of our flowering.

COMMENTS OF THE POEM
Jenie Franksay 10 July 2013

lovely write.... read my poem my epitaph... you will like it.

3 0 Reply
James Mclain 10 July 2013

Golden wings touch the blending wheat that flows...iip

3 0 Reply
READ THIS POEM IN OTHER LANGUAGES
946 / 834
Patrick White

Patrick White

Campbell River, British Columbia, Canada
Close
Error Success