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The Husbanding of Katharine's Life: A Series of Poems

* Our tree of life was consciousness. We cut the branch and fell. Genes revealed the sacred lust. My darling it is true, You cured myself of me And I cured you of you. From death's ground we grew. Bound to trust, freely, Love, we came to care. What matters is the mind we shared. As long as truth could tell, The god we gathered was us. Our tree stands for the good of all. We understood and lived the Fall. * My sweetheart, bitter hurt My wife, life Abandoned all but the burden Consciousness paints As our still strife Still alive in my eyes Our promise mine to keep For us both Yours now broken Open into mine alone. * In that stroke of fate My other side was gone Phantom body pain remains While the severing continues Cell by cell remembering its mate Crying out for that care Never to be again from her Half that made me whole Gone forever into This hole now me.

2 * Our bridge is broken The center span slowly dissolved before my eyes You disappeared into the other side and took it with you I hear the collapsing black hole roar in the center of every neuron It calls out your name in the language of loss I translate the noise into the word "connect" But the span hangs out over the void Dead end wires whistle the interstellar tune Your light keeps my eyes awake It continues to come from the distance beyond your death Sun now gone into its going At the base of my span a tiny rose bud gathers your gaze And looks to you as it opens I see your face The unbearable weight of the ages accumulates as my mind The inertia of matter never to be patterned your way again Presses on my consciousness to continue identifying What is, what was My love, my love. * To learn like the flame To burn the given To turn it into our name Change into exchange To light up what is To show relationship The exposed Us, that burden We trust ourselves to bear The difference that knows Nothing is always the same. * As light from a sun that no longer exists You continue for the rest of my life To enter my eyes and fix the constellations In my mind that guides me by the truth of your name. * I miss her So I target the dead Center of my life And know by the pain I have hit it again. * Every time I remember her

3 I dismember myself Limb by limb I lop Off my reaching for her I am down to one arm And its hand that holds The knife of knowing Ready to cut itself free. Will she still be remembered With all my limbs now hers Without a body from which to reach for me And I a stump unable to hold on? Blood in the eyes blocks the vision The knife slides from my fist. Still I cannot forget I will remain faithful To her absence and live That pain consciously Waiting for my limbs To grow back to touch this world again So I may hold on to something Other than this loss. * Tenderly, with great care take The long thin pin and push it with skill Through your open unblinking eye Into your brain Continue the pressure steadily past All those images of her Skewering as you go The most beautiful until The pin stops with a dull ping Against the back of the skull Where the pain is At last pinned to her name. Her name is humanity, Common death and loss, Absence gone into the pain Pointless because everywhere You turn is to The direction of the other As your necessary connection. * At night when I open my eyes it is darker inside than out. * The Kokinshu, Seneca, Montaigne, Epicurus I roam history to spread my burden But the absolute absence of you grows heavier

4 I continue to cultivate this consciousness Smouldering stubble after the fire. * So many configurations, families, nations, couples Neurons embracing, transmitting messages of care and interest All shaped in the image of Katharine and I embraced in love. * Not the dream of death but the death of the dream. Such is the wide-eyed wake I hold in Katharos' true name. To mean the consciousness of life which we came together To gather as our good we knew as god. * My purifying one, Katharine, We took each other as antidotes To the inhuman conditioning of disconnection. We purged ourselves of salvation. We refused the ancient ignorance And embraced the original meaning of sin. We told each other the truth That death was real and life enough, That there was no cure for the human condition Except the intimate care we freely gave Because there was no other way to live But inside out of love. * We wish the flame To outlive the candle. The candle stands, cold. Her last breath holds The sun as her name.

5 * My wife, friend, lover, pupil, Teacher, companion, my life, My wholly other I became When, mind and heart, we came Together to gather the good. We have done so as our love For each other and the world. We, as lovers of the wisdom In each other have come To the wisdom of love Through each other. You became the value of life Brought to life for me. Now you are dead. I remain alive in that value Living out your loss. * Your back is now turned to me, And vastly you look into the last of the light. You are turning into the very world I see. You are becoming the beautiful sight, Provider of the life I live by. I see you must go where There is nothing left to hide. You leave only the truth behind For me to find myself in. Dressed serenely in pure white I watch you disappear Into a pure tear caught Glistening at the edge of your eye. You have left the world the world. We all tremble inside. * Katharos, my pure one, gathering the last of the light and giving it back increased, you look out and see to the very end of your life where the night begins forever for you. We were waiting for each other so we could exchange what we were for what we could become - and we did, we lived for and through each other, we loved even to your death that parted us back to our separate selves, you to be gone, me to keep going on, taking you with me as re-membrance to connect to everyone I meet in your Name, Katharos, my love.

6 Katharine made the living of her dying the five concepts she told me she wished to be remembered for: beauty, fun, logic, serenity, and above all, truth. Beauty: she made her living of dying beautiful, a thing of benevolence, bounty, a bonus of good and that which made others happy in helping her. Her living of dying oriented others to value life. Fun: she made her living of dying fun - she fooled around with it, treated it at times mischievously and with calculated interest, she even stuck her tongue out at it with gentle irreverence, she enjoyed being waited on, and looked on death with loving disinterest. Logic: she made her living of dying logical - a dialogue between life and death, an account of her going and coming, a collection of connected events remembered and enacted, made meaningful by attention and intention. She asked for detailed reasons for her treatments, analysed them, decided on a cost benefit basis, weighed the means and ends, ratios and reckonings of loss and gain, quantity and quality. She reported all this with a consistent application of logic and reality. Serenity: she made her living of dying serene, a thing of calm, clarity, lucidity - a clearing in the usual thoughtless activity of the living which invited the person to meditate upon the value of life and its meaning beyond mere conditioned busyness. Truth: she made her dying the truth - she willed to know what is, she wanted to learn the facts rather than to yearn for their avoidance. She trusted reality for she knew she had no other choice - what is, is and because death is necessary then life is sufficient lived naturally and normally. She trusted in the tree of life, she depended from it and on it, ripening rapidly into maturity, attaining 70 at 34, accelerating the process of becoming a full person out of necessity, of logic meeting and directing life within the limits allowed the clear pure mind. She practiced holding on and letting go of her branch as she swelled pregnant with her dying life, and turned the cancer's backward evil into forward live, meeting her death with courage and understanding, smiles and care for me and everyone she met. * I see you disappearing more each day Becoming the space between what matters to my mind. Death becomes you, You wear it beautifully as it wears you out. Like the sun you are Collapsing into yourself And the result is light. The flowers and people surround you And grow in your going. They will stand in for you When you are gone. * Katharos, my pure one, how beautifully you wear the light;

7 What you looked for and saw in me was the truth of life Which you exchanged with me that changed us both. * The pain radiates From your name As light from the sun. I grow scream by scream As the dreams disappear, Shed husks, the bud broken Open reaching, retching In the light of separateness To touch reality awake, Consciously connecting Because of death, life thrives When the end arrives, Ready or not, it comes As we go. * Let me see if I can summon the words and try to alleviate the pain a little. I get images of Kath that softly slip in and then explode and cause such fragmenting pain: her nodding off to sleep in her reclining bed position and her head drooping to the side or forward so uncomfortable looking for me; or as I swallow a Xanax I remember her difficulties taking pills; or as I eat I feel my stomach tighten and sicken when I recall her hunger but discomfort at eating due to constipation - so many of these painful memories. All these images have in common my identifying with her particular body states of pain and suffering and my helplessness and gut wrenching sickness at having nothing but suffering to help her suffering with. This is the hardest for the caring one: to simply stay with the dying beloved even when you can't help relieve her suffering and won't let the pain turn you into water that wishes to run away or stone that atones by remaining alone.

8 * Katharine, my sunshine, my life, my wife I speak to you now as the dance of my neurons, As the possibility of my careful love for this world And its people caught in their own reflections Unable to reflect upon them and so see through The face that entrances and entices them to fall madly In love with themselves as first and last resort of fear. I needed the starkest admitted vulnerability To see you as my sunshine, you who continue To light up my life even in the darkness of your death, For I see for you, with you, through you As I work to leave a window for others To do the same through, with and for me. Oh my sweetest heart I have not let you Go although you long ago have let go of me. Orpheus put himself to sleep with his music, Mine keeps me awake For I can not stop reaching for you. I know you have gone into my love for you That reaches out now to touch everyone I meet To greet in your great name that releases me To be more than I could ever be alone. Even as now when I am all that is Left of you, your absence fills me to fulfill You as what I must complete again and again As the half of my whole and the whole of my half Looking always to meet your equal and heal the wound. Time is sealed with your kiss, Katharos, One pair of lips surrounds your pure name. Our Good is bye and willing it to be. * Katharos, the purifying principle of consciousness that turns matter into light enlightenment - understanding - Ren - Sophia -the Mean of Humanity - the love of wisdom into the wisdom of love. Katharos, gift giver, life liver, relationship, change and exchange, understood and enacted. Collapsing into herself she gave off the pure light of dying in beauty, fun, logic, serenity and truth. Her person continued to grow into the future even as her body shrunk back into its past. She realized the value of life consciously lived, responsible for relationship, grounded in the ordinary, freely entering the social exchange to bring out the best in others as herself. * Pure white blossom you are unfolding your final night.

9 You know what to do with your light, Everywhere it goes into the growing of new life. * 9 months dying, 9 months being born, The growth in your belly was a life full of death As is all life that issues from the earth. The tear at the corner of your eye gathered the light. You brought the last breath from far away, Your strong young body wanting to go on forever. I will be remembering the shadow of your smile As the song continued and you stopped. * To ease us out of life is as important to ease us into life - in the first we celebrate the joy of potentiality and in the second we mourn the memory of never again the actuality. * How to say it? She is dead. Long live life. She is now only our memories of her. She has left her body to reside in our hearts and minds to move us to bring out the best in each other as her living of her dying has done. Where does the candle flame go when blown out? * This is what it feels like. All thought turns to touch which returns to pain, recoils, screams, and runs away into the night taking the last of the light and more than half of your life. You remain fixed in the immense mansion of pain. There are many doors but there is only one empty room filled with the truth. So you stay. You do not want to leave because for you there is no longer an exit. You wish to feel it as it is. There is an operation that must be performed: the pain of being born must be borne, made conscious. There is the sharp knife of knowing that hangs from the tendon of time as the dream that stretches forever. You know what was is now a knot of Notness. You use the knife to cut itself free of itself. You sever the Not with the temporary Yes. You begin to work on the left hand with the right, letting it know clearly what you are doing. Finger by finger, the blade severs just there where they join the palm. Next goes the thumb. You must use your teeth to remove the digits on the right hand. Gristle and bone, the teeth chew through. You wipe the sweat from your head that turns into blood from the paddles of your palms. This is what it feels like. Still, you haven't yet begun to lose your loss. Limbs remain. So you continue. The arms go to the power shears with the red button and the legs and penis follow, hitting the button with your forehead. Now you can touch her absence only with your lopped trunk. A stump of pain unable to reach the loss, to bring her back, able only to feel the loss and her absence. There you remain, alone with the pain. You wait for the first nub to stir and begin to grow back. For you would touch her again in others. * Life depends upon me Holding on to the Tree. I swell with death

10 Breathing in her last breath. The weight of consciousness Ripens the matter of life. I could let go, But we knew When we vowed 'I do', That death was true And the life we trusted was us. * Bearing her last breath Life depends upon me Ripening with death Tending my hold on the tree. Many the false calls, Falling for the Big All, Choosing to rot Proving what is not. * I bear her lost last breath. My life depends on death. I ripen the responsibility. I tend my hold on the tree. Pretenders to the solution, Offer cosmic dissolutions. They feel they free their minds But watch their double bind. The saviors preach letting go. Afraid to ripen and grow, They fall like snow Covering their refusal to know.

11 * I wake to the New Year And the point of life Two weeks after your death Pushing through my pupil To teach the lesson of loss Drawing out the ancient Blind Oedipal pain Past the Why into the space Of the time of never again Continuing love of my sun gone out Light of you last seen Between Acturus and Betelgeuse. * I wake to the New year The point of life Without you Pushing through my pupil Drawing out the lesson of loss The gain of the blind Oedipal pain The ancient exchange The light of you Last seen Going out And out Now into the seeing Of what must be seen The implacable fact Of the truth of death As the meaning of life. * She is turning her body into light modeling the work of the sun. She wears her wearing out beautifully: no shapeless shround for her But a well tailored outfit expensively classical, tastefully paid for by the truth. She carries the massive body of her life teeming with death. "There is a definite relationship between mass and luminosity. Mass creates pressure which produces heat which makes light. There is a disappearance of solar mass at a rate of 4.2 million tons per second."

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From The Symposium, Plato (380 B.C.) "So all this to-do between the sexes is a relic of that original state of ours, when we were whole; and now, when we are longing for and following after that primeval wholeness, we say we are in love. For there was a time when we were one, but now, for our sins, god has scattered us abroad. Moreover, gentlemen, there is every reason to fear that, if we neglect the worship of the gods, they'll split us up again. Therefore, it is our duty to inspire our friends with reverence and piety, so we may attain the blessed union of love. For love must never be withstood or we will incur the displeasure of the gods. But if we cling to love in friendship and reconciliation, we shall be among the happy few to whom it is given to meet their other halves. For we are all like pieces of coins that children break for keepsakes - making two out of one and each of us is forever seeking the half that will tally with himself. The happiness of the whole human race, women no less than men, is to be found in the consummation of our love, and in the healing of our dissevered nature by finding each his proper mate." From Love's Coming of Age, Edward Carpenter (1896) "That there should exist one other person in the world towards whom all openness of interchange should establish itself, from whom there should be no concealment; whose body should be as dear to one, in every part, as one's own; with whom there should be no sense of Mine or Thine, in property or possession; into whose mind one's own thoughts should naturally flow, as it were to know themselves and receive a new illumination; and between whom and oneself there should be a spontaneous rebound of sympathy in all the joys and sorrows and experiences of life; such is perhaps one of the dearest wishes of the soul." Inscription on a tombstone of the Roman Republican period (300 B.C.) "She was the guardian spirit of my house, she was my hope and my only love. What I wished she also wished, what I shunned she shunned also. None of her inmost thoughts was ever hidden from me. She lacked no diligence in spinning wool, she was thrifty, but she was generous in love to her husband. She tasted neither food nor drink without me. Good was her counsel, quick her mind, noble her repute." From Queen of Elegies, Propertius (10 B.C.) "Now when I put off childish things for marriage, and the strange wedding-ribbon bound my hair, your home I entered, Paullus - soon to leave it: this stone proclaims that I was one man's bride. Cornelia was no shame to those old victors of Rome, she set a pattern in a noble house. This was no change: my lifetime all was spotless, pure from the bridal to the funeral torch. My nature gave me laws from the blood within me - terror of justice could not better them. I have earned the mother's dress of honour - I was not reft away from a barren home. You, Lepidus, you Paullus, are my comforts, it was your love that closed my dying eyes."

* Alive you made my world.

13 Dead, the world is now made of you. * We knew we would meet Building from opposite shores Separate in the dark Our art held true We did not miss We met exactly In the middle of our lives Our different ends Came to their same beginning As we kissed And you disappeared. * Language be Speaks me Thoroughly through The passage surpassing The passer by: Left behind to mark What he missed -The truth uncovered As sin seen through. * Where The present is Absent and the Absent is present I find you Waiting on me To find you. And I do. * Night after night I wake dry throated From crying out Your name.

14 * The work of mourning The art of remaining Awake Through the long sleep Stepping from Time to time With no time right With only the wrong time left. * My love we made Love to the end. We brought the death In your body To be borne by your life. Consciously we completed The circuit from you to me, And from birth to death. * My love, I find you inside of everyone I ask out. You gave me your death as your final gift and I will Continue to open it with the best of my life. *