in my blackest moments - a poem for gary olson (an early poem by Gregory Hall  1946 - 2009)

 when the blackness comes there's nothing to do;

ti jean. jostling in the street

i realize i've met a mountain.

o the blink'll come; there's no doubt.

and when it comes, will there be blackness still?

gary envisioned it as being high, high as you've

ever been; all your best friends there

whatever you dig to drink most,

you've got it--

a tall of old E; your favorite music,

your mother and father there holding hands

and singing together --

all the brothers, sisters, babies there; everyone

high and happy.

like the most happy blake things i've read, close

to the little sheep, on the planet

the very stars singing songs with light in the corners

and no fear and no hunger;

no restlessness or darkness of the spirit.

the earth alive and well; no cancers or diseases

no walls between us at last forever.

and this is death: the blink that comes,

then high--evermore.

the mysterious land from which nobody's come back;

the pictures still hang, revered by the survivors

the poems on the page, not to fold till the last

being's attention goes and the time falls off the walls

of consciousness for the last and final collapsing

echo of existence shot to the far reaches of the cosmos.

the ends of never; the borders of the infinite;

the wolf-ghost's parents lair;

where the collossus of the universe groans on a bed of

galaxies, sent to sleep in centuries, its' alarm

set for the inside-out paroxym convoluting eternity.

see the blind, the cripples, the misery of the manacles;

it will pass. the blink is the grace of god;

the vision a consolation when all human wheels

stick in the mud of illusion and our throats are parched

by the dust of the human fireplace.

carloads of tender poetry will bathe us in bliss

till the parting from this planet brings us together

in eternity; in the land which arrives after

the blink has its being. o gary your vision has saved

my soul.