At dinner, I heard
about those in a tribe who,
as they die, will tie
around the dying one’s finger
a string long enough
to reach the sea. The other end
is attached to a boat
to carry away the soul.
I have wanted such a string,
not for when I am dead,
but for when I am alive,
something to secure me
to that most intangible part
of myself, as if it could be lost.
Perhaps the string would be less tether
and more reminder
that that distant land
wherever it is we go when we’re gone
is a lot closer than I think,
close enough that it’s probably
even now touching where the soft frayed ends
would be dangling so near my finger tip.
An interesting custom I’d never heard of, but then there’s so much I’ve never heard of, or if heard, forgotten. The first section of the poem delivers the story complete, and the next two respond to it. I like that you take it out of the death ritual and turn it toward living. These lines
even now touching where the soft frayed ends
would be dangling so near my finger tip.
leave me as reader sensing the connection to the opening story. The title is good but I wonder if it would sing better as statement rather than question: I Would Sing More.
so right about the title …
Maybe that’s what tying a string around our fingers (to remember something or other) has been about all these years…and we never knew!
loved this, dear Rosemerry…
i had some thought along those lines … funny how these things pop up across cultures, shades of similarity. i loved that story. so captured my imagination. imagine living in that culture. thanks, Beth …
Sing Without Ceasing.
Paraphrasing Baba Ram Dass: There is Only One Song.
“… that distant land/wherever it is we go when we’re gone/is a lot closer than I think…” It’s closer than the air around us. Heaven is under our feet. (And in the marrow of our bones, the fiber of our nerves, the beats of our heart.) We breathe it in; but never out.
There is only one song. Mmmmmmm.