Shakespeare Alive

[purplerabbit]

In honor of my Uncle Jim, I wrote this Jan. 14th after his memorial service:

Shakespeare Alive
by purplerabbit

I would not enter pearly gates nor walk streets of gold,
Valhalla, Nirvana, nor the underworld of the Greeks of old,
Take me not to a place of rest to live unchanging for eternity.

Nor do I believe in purgatory or hell fires,
Forever tormenting those who have lost their way.
I do not believe in a wrathful spirit of such enmity.

I do not see the divine as an accountant
Adding rights and wrongs to balance a karmic ledger
To decide a rebirth as king or beggar.

Nor would I walk the mortal earth beyond my death,
A ghost forever mourning things undone
I would not have an eternity of regrets, nor the world shun.

I do not fear the soul its unknown journey,
For this life provides its own immortality
In all those souls with whom we have shared our reality.

True miracle is love shared and memories forged,
The way our words and our deeds
Shape all the world that is and will be.

We are remembered in every act of kindness,
In every ideal shared and lived to the fullest,
In each and every way we have treated those dearest.

Each act upon this world, each creation
Poetry, music, art, history and foundation
Imbued with our soul's power lives on forever.

It is the power of this life's work and love
Of each small moment as well as life's enormity
Through which each of us has immortality.

Shakespeare then, did not die
Nor shall you and I.