Earth Keeper

Favorite parts:

“Hold hard this infirmity.
It defines you. You are old.
Now fix yourself in summer,
In thickets of ripe berries,
And venture toward the ridge
Where you were born. Await there
The setting sun. Be alive
To that old conflagration
One more time. Mortality
Is your shadow and your shade.
Translate yourself to spirit;
Be present on your journey.
Keep to the trees and waters.
Be the singing of the soil.”

“The story is very important, for it relates us to the stars. It is a bridge between the earth and the heavens. There is no earth without the sun and moon. There is no earth without the stars. When we die, Dragonfly says, we go to the farther camps. Death is not the end of life. There is life in the farther camps. The stars are fires in the farther camps.

In the making of my song There is a crystal wind And the burnished dark of dusk There is the memory of elders dancing In firelight at Two Meadows Where the reeds whisper I sing and there is gladness in itAnd laughter like the play of spinning leavesI sing and I am gone from sorrowTo the farther camps”

That last bit made me think of “farther up and further in!” (From The Chronicles of Narnia: The Last Battle by C.S. Lewis)