Perhaps dying isn’t hard after all

17 October 2007

Ice The sun slides westward. Silvering icy seas Warming my cold-blotched hands, Shriving the skin of my soul. Blue sky belying polar wind, Green grass infertile land, Creased smile the belch of pain: Uncharted worlds. Or do these steadfast, gurgling waves, Kaleidoscopic magpie calls, Dear friends' departing touch, Betoken rhythms underneath Which ear nor eye nor mind can trace, Or even guess, but only celebrate? Walk we this thin and silent ice Because a pillowed master sleeps? Peter Matheson Mopoke Into the cool precincts of night like winged Buddha, silent, full-moon-eyed in the blue shadows under the eiderdown of a flaming coral tree, watching the night-watchmen with their blue-white beams, possums rummaging in the bins. Mopoke. Mopoke. Rodents scurrying, brushed off the bush rug, one by one, unlamented, as if they were brown buds. So, I thought: perhaps dying isn’t hard after all, but so much softness wrapping itself around us— as soft as down, thick and cushiony. Spirited away nestled in a feathered chest we close our eyes against the dappled, vaulted light, riding the high notes beyond pain, the strings of our sinews plucked until our bones are clean and white. Cassandra O'Loughlin

ARTS AND CULTURE

Perhaps dying isn’t hard after all

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