Slip Gentle

 I'll slip gentle into that good night,

Why should I rage,

Why should I fight,

As if my going,

Is some dying of the light,

Not the death of the dawn,

But the birth of the bright,

Tell me, for what am I holding on?

For more of the same?

More empty days, scorched by the Sun?

Better to cut free and run,

Let go of the weight of what you'll become,

Life is for letting go,

You shut out the light and smother it so,

In your grasping, nothing can grow,

So mourn for your pride,

And your fragile ego,

Embrace the life that's to come,

When 'all of the colours bleed into one'

Release your hold back into the wild,

Where it wont hold you back,

You've been held like a child,

Restrained by the reach of your fear,

You thought you'd be kept by what you kept here,

But you threw yourself out on your ear,

Chasing the dream,

Year after year,

(When really you've always been here,

Behind all the blinds,

Beneath the veneer)

Then let go, luminous one,

Surrender the days,

Let them become,

Become whatever they may,

Whatever becomes,

Let go the moments, 

One, then, by one,

And slip gentle into that good night,

For it is good,

And not the dying of light,

If your heart doesn't fear

If your  soul is set right,

Let go to God,

Surrender the fight.

(Written in part as a response to Dylan Thomas's poem 'Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night'. It's one of my favourite poems and his performance of it is one of my favourite poetry performances of all time, but he and I do not share the same worldview (nor the same talent, I might needlessly add). Thomas may not have been thinking of the afterlife when urged his fading father to fight the 'dying of the light', and I have a similar themed one about the death of my mother, but this life isn't all there is, and I write, not for a loved one but for myself. It's not so much a letting go of this life, as a letting go of the hold the fear of my death has over me. I am happy to stay as Long as the Lord allows, but I want to be ready to go when the time comes.)