Insight from a Stoic Friend

Just a few days ago the tree overhanging our mailboxes lost a large limb in a freak storm.  Rather than just haul the limb away, the local bureaucrats had the tree cut down, for me a vile desecration.  She was at her spot when I moved here twenty years ago and for all the countless trips I made to our mailbox, I always felt her presence and looked at her with gratitude.  Now there's  a large denuded area, a rent in space, that is palpable.  After my anger and sorrow dissipated somewhat, I began to realize that she had provided a priceless insight for me.  As my illness continues to progress and more and more losses accumulate, I've been obsessed with the notion of how soon I would like it all  to end.  I think of it daily now.  But, my stoic friend carried her wounds proudly and adapted to whatever came her way.   Then, one day a wanton insensate act destroyed her.  I couldn't bear to watch them hack her to pieces.  But, I couldn't turn off the sounds of the instruments of her destruction.  Suddenly,  the great verse of the Bhagavad Gita filled my consciousness as never before.  Lord Krishna said you are not your body.  It is a temporary cloak.   You were never born and  you will  never die.  And, this  is  so for  all sensate creatures.  My friend dropped her cloak and transformed to another state of being as I will also in the Lord's good time, not mine.

Endnote:  This is a prose poem.   I haven't posted a poem in many months due to extensive physical therapy over the past three months due to worsening Parkinson's disease.  And, I was gripped by writer's block as a result.  I think the Muse has returned at last.