“Well,” said Pooh, “what I like best,” and then he had to stop and think. Because although Eating Honey was a very good thing to do, there was a moment just before you began to eat it which was better than when you were, but he didn’t know what it was called.”
― A.A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh
The hover before the in breath,
milk ducts in an empty breast,
the stomach: a hallowed out bruise,
an arm contorted every way to ease a throbbing itch,
slack tide’s final pause,
the coyote hamming to the camera in the air just off the cliff,
my attention’s constant hole never empty yet—
Is it the ohm?
Is it those last shivering atoms releasing the reverberation of the gong,
the hum of what was catching up to the trumpet of what will be,
the sway of the air’s almost embrace of the planet’s constant spin?
Let’s linger here, eyes closed, tongues out to catch the first drops.
Not holding our breath, not rushing it either.
Life as Improv 
What gorgeous images and sensations you have compiled here, M! You bring the holy, cavernous mystery of being into technicolor. Who needs CERN when we have such literary cloud chambers as these revealing the continuous traces of what is hovering at the boundaries of our being!? This piece is an oscilloscope glance into the sine wave of arrival and dissolution through which we row our daily boats…
Peace
Michael
Sitting here feeling gifted by your words and images back to me. I love having a technical friend who shares such a foreign word such as oscilloscope. I enjoyed my google search for this machine – Your row boat image reminds me of the illustration of the poem starting around 11:20 minute of this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddw1_3ZVjTE We will row our eternal boats too, apparently 🙂 Joy joy to you M!
I probably have this entirely wrong, Marga, but was death going to have been in the title?
I didn’t mean to be so cryptic, but now I see that my inability to create the title and the series of images I threw out there could “mean” all sorts of things, and death is a damn good stab at “it.” I was trying to find a word for that moment Pooh couldn’t think of a name for – and I was unable to think of a name for it either. It is something like the joy of experiencing – the dawning that the moment before the honey or cake or fall down the mountain is delicious. The “joy of anticipation” phrase has contained this nugget all along, but walking around in a body has helped it to become a reality in my experience, the joy of the ride up and down and around and around becoming less about where it is headed and more about the deliciousness of getting to do it, every moment, apart from what is next. The anticipation is a pleasure in itself. But death is this too – a pleasurable occurrence, not being rushed, not being dreaded. The march there is good – Now I’m off the deep end. 🙂
Aha, lovely. There were certain lines that suggested death to me e.g. “those last shivering atoms releasing the reverberation of the gong” and “slack tide’s final pause”, but that’s just me reimaging with stuff in my own head I wasn’t conscious of. But death, as you suggest, has a certain delicious sense of freedom about it when we’re talking purely of the phenomena of mind – that sense that it’s all passing away, there’s nothing to cling to, ever, not even the idea of ‘me’, the clinger. I think you know this sense very well. H ❤
I read this as beautiful Hymn to Presence. Thank you.
Alison xox
You are so kind to read and decipher – you present the boiled-down syrup of my watery sauce. How have I stumbled so generously upon people with such clear eyes? xo!
Reblogged this on heleyem.
love
Beautifully written.
Thanks for the poetic reminders. Anticipation of what’s to be comes with the sad realization that moments pass. And so,
Let’s be eager like kids with our noses pressed to the window. Or Pooh bears sniffing the honey…
Thanks,
Vincent
Hello Margo… what are you up to? Just posted our e-book on my post http://memymagnificentself.com/2016/06/13/feel-something-life/ You can download the book by clicking on the first photo. love to you x Barbara