THE AFTERLIFE<\/p>\n
They’re moving off in all imaginable directions,
\neach according to his own private belief,
\nand this is the secret that silent Lazarus would not reveal:
\nthat everyone is right, as it turns out.
\nyou go to the place you always thought you would go,
\nthe place you kept lit in an alcove in your head.<\/p>\n
Some are being shot into a funnel of flashing colors
\ninto a zone of light, white as a January sun.
\nOthers are standing naked before a forbidding judge who sits
\nwith a golden ladder on one side, a coal chute on the other.<\/p>\n
Some have already joined the celestial choir
\nand are singing as if they have been doing this forever,
\nwhile the less inventive find themselves stuck
\nin a big air conditioned room full of food and chorus girls.<\/p>\n
Some are approaching the apartment of the female God,
\na woman in her forties with short wiry hair
\nand glasses hanging from her neck by a string.
\nWith one eye she regards the dead through a hole in her door.<\/p>\n
There are those who are squeezing into the bodies
\nof animals – eagles and leopards – and one trying on
\nthe skin of a monkey like a tight suit,
\nready to begin another life in a more simple key,<\/p>\n
while others float off into some benign vagueness,
\nlittle units of energy heading for the ultimate elsewhere.<\/p>\n
There are even a few classicists being led to an underworld
\nby a mythological creature with a beard and hooves.
\nHe will bring them to the mouth of the furious cave
\nguarded over by Edith Hamilton and her three-headed dog.<\/p>\n
The rest just lie on their backs in their coffins
\nwishing they could return so they could learn Italian
\nor see the pyramids, or play some golf in a light rain.
\nThey wish they could wake in the morning like you
\nand stand at a window examining the winter trees,
\nevery branch traced with the ghost writing of snow.<\/p>\n
–Billy Collins<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
THE AFTERLIFE They’re moving off in all imaginable directions, each according to his own private belief, and this is the secret that silent Lazarus would not reveal: that everyone is right, as it turns out. you go to the place you always thought you would go, the place you kept lit in an alcove in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[217,16,215,30,219],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7831","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-meditation","category-nature","category-poetry","category-quotes","category-spirit"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7831","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7831"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7831\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11925,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7831\/revisions\/11925"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7831"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7831"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7831"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}