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Watching NDEs on YouTube

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You dream till you die, then you rise

into a new dream, more real than life,

shucked of your body.

I watch them until I fall asleep, listening

to their stories, their voices comforting.

They speak of fields in the distance,

each blade of grass visible,

each leaf, each vein.

They have 360 degree vision,

everything happening all at once. 

If they think of someone, they appear

out of nowhere. And angels,

ten feet tall, guides that protect them.

They are composed of peace, particles

of light, actively loving them, like the ocean

loves whatever falls into it, comes out of it,

crawls on the shore and breathes,

back to a life that includes death,

which they no longer fear. They wake

clear as water, avid as sunlight.

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Pulitzer Prize finalist Dorianne Laux’s most recent collection is Life on Earth, (W.W. Norton, 2024).  She is also author of Only As The Day Is Long: New and Selected, The Book of Men, winner of the Paterson Poetry Prize and Facts about the Moon, winner of the Oregon Book Award, and a textbook released in 2024: Finger Exercises for Poets. Laux is founding faculty at Pacific University and a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. She lives with husband Joseph Millar and their bunny, Odin, in Richmond, CA. 

 

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