(Introduction) This article is in three parts: introduction, poem, and the body. And I know I dont need to say that, but I want to clarify it for the reader so you kind of know where Im headed.

Has the thought of dying ever occurred to you? Is there emotional pain with this issue? That being: are we looking at the end of the road, kind of speaking?

When we roll over and get out of bed, most of us will see things around them as normal, ordinary, unrelated to death: you will not say: Is this my last day on earth.

Every two seconds someone dies someplace on earth. To a city the size of Lima, Peru, perhaps it is as high as 80 to 100-deaths a day; or to a smaller size city like St. Paul, 10 or 20.

In my twenty-years of counseling, Ive seen many folks suffering, the loss, the grief; it is perhaps why I got out of the business.

Many folks go to drinking, go into depression, or ointo other stages of emotional illness: all this to deal with death, to find comfort. We even seek out psychologists and the clergy.

(The Poem)

Winter of Death

In the winter of doubt
Death swimsengulfs
Like a hurricanelike
A ship sinking; thus,
Pitilessly tons of
Crushing sea!

Here I stand on the lofty
Poop, above the angry
Waves, as it waits
For Me!...

#943 [12/7/05]

(The Body) We fear the unknownthe big secret in counseling, and in religion, perhaps. Death can simply mean, or be in one mans mind, the closing of his eyes as he opens up the eye of the soul for new sight.

What is true to the body, should it not be true to the mind (?) If we can reason it, it most likely is. Death can be no less than becoming a completion of a part of something. If one is to become complete, on his deathbed, he sure has no gender left in him or her, just completeness, Id think.

What wise words can a person say to another while dying? I thought about that when my mother died, and I had no wise words, but she did. She said:

Im fine with it Im ready I dont want to live like this. Im ok with it, and she enjoyed the guests and folks stopping by to greet her in the hospital. Towards the end of her 30-days in the hospital, lets say about six-days before she died, she knew they could not help her. And thus, those words came out.

But what really was she saying, or do I interpret her words to mean to me, just this: the here, the right now, this moment is real, and this is where it all takes place, the present holds the proof, transformation is about to take place. She was not worried about bills, and dinner, and so forth and so on: she was involved with the transformation process. That I believe is what she was telling me.

Just simply arithmetic that adds up to: believe in God and yourself; for the final moment has come; grab the moment, and dwell in its wine, and you will be victorious. My mother was, for youre on the stage, and today is the day to die.