One that my friend Mike shared with me…which inspired a series of photographs from a walk around my neighborhood of irises. Once again, thank you Mike for your words of comfort. In particular, I like the part about finding my voice… It goes hand in hand with some of Mark Nepo’s work, how we are alone, yet knitted together in a great mass of humanness.
The Wild Iris
At the end of my suffering
there was a door.
Hear me out: that which you call death
I remember.
Overhead, noises, branches of the pine shifting.
Then nothing. The weak sun
flickered over the dry surface.
It is terrible to survive
as consciousness
buried in the dark earth.
Then it was over: that which you fear, being
a soul and unable
to speak, ending abruptly, the stiff earth
bending a little. And what I took to be
birds darting in low shrubs.
You who do not remember
passage from the other world
I tell you I could speak again: whatever
returns from oblivion returns
to find a voice:
from the center of my life came
a great fountain, deep blue
shadows on azure seawater.
The Magical Storybook of Professor Peacock 