CONSTELLATIONS

CONSTELLATIONS

Where exactly is it we go when we die

Does the soul linger on, hovering above the operating table

The hospice room, the car crash,

The slashing of the knife, the crack of the pistol,

Cognizant of its surroundings?

Does the spirit stay behind to comfort the mourners.

Counseling them in their abject grief

Hoping to provide a little succor or sustenance?

Or does the spirit simply fly away. 

Knowing it is time,

Saying so long and farewell

Disappearing into the ether or blinding white light,

With loved ones who have gone before 

Inviting them to a fine initiation banquet

In a land where the streets are paved with gold?

Perhaps the spirit transmigrates into another corporal form,

Eager to perfect itself with another life, another body

Fervently hoping for the grace to finally get it right.

Or perhaps the dead hang out with the 88 constellations

That hang high in the heavens, sometimes hard to see,

Obscured by clouds or the smog of our cities

Like Orion The Hunter, Andromeda, Queen of Ethiopia

Cancer the Crab, Scorpio the Scorpion, and Pisces the Fish

Or one of the other 83 that reside in that realm

Perhaps the dead look down at us from the vastness of space.

Mystical stars, ensconced in a clear autumn sky.

-Bruce Potts

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