Author: Reena Saxena

Reena is the host of Reena’s Exploration Challenge

PROMPT #132

I came across a poem by Rebecca Elson, and I reproduce the first three stanzas here

ANTIDOTES TO FEAR OF DEATH

Sometimes as an antidote
To fear of death,
I eat the stars.

Those nights, lying on my back,
I suck them from the quenching dark
Til they are all, all inside me,
Pepper hot and sharp.

Sometimes, instead, I stir myself
Into a universe still young,
Still warm as blood:

Would you like to write something in a similar spirit, or just carry this ahead – in prose or poetry? Can you think of a story or anecdote or historical tale on the same theme. It should basically be a story of survival strategies.

Go where the prompt leads you.

~*~

Death stares

Trying to quell me

What is to fear I ask

Death is the reality of life

my composition
exists
in an eternal loop

conscious and alive
non-existent and dead
unending

i fear not
what is
natural

Inspired by Reena’s Exploration Challenge #132

Carl Sagan (11/9/34 – 12/20/96) was an American astronomer, cosmologist, astrophysicist, astrobiologist, author, science popularizer, and science communicator in astronomy and other natural sciences. – Wikipedia

If you were like me, you inhaled the show “Cosmos” in the 1980s. Carl Sagan contributed mightily to my understanding of our universe as well as the various sciences he was involved in. He was someone I looked up to and learned from. Sagan had a great mind and a deep compassion for the living. He helped me make sense of things in a world that doesn’t easily give you understanding. I will forever be grateful to have been exposed to his mind and his rationale.