Death and Life

Everytime someone near to me dies, I consider life and how I am
living.  My aunt passed away last weekend, and tomorrow I am going to
be with family for her funeral. I have one more direct blood relative in the
generation before me, which is cause for reflection.  Thanks to Old Poetry for
providing the opportunity to browse through a number of Walt Whitman poems!

Walt Whitman
On The Beach At Night, Alone

ON the beach at night alone,
As the old mother sways her to and fro, singing her husky song,
As I watch the bright stars shining—I think a thought of the clef of
         the universes, and of the future.

A VAST SIMILITUDE interlocks all,
All spheres, grown, ungrown, small, large, suns, moons, planets,
         comets, asteroids,
All the substances of the same, and all that is spiritual upon the
         same,
All distances of place, however wide,
All distances of time—all inanimate forms,
All Souls—all living bodies, though they be ever so different, or in
         different worlds,
All gaseous, watery, vegetable, mineral processes—the fishes, the
         brutes,
                                           
All men and women—me also;
All nations, colors, barbarisms, civilizations, languages;
All identities that have existed, or may exist, on this globe, or any
         globe;
All lives and deaths—all of the past, present, future;
This vast similitude spans them, and always has spann'd, and shall
         forever span them, and compactly hold them, and enclose them.