To Taste of the Fear I Have Already Ceased to Be

When I taste of the fear I have already

Ceased to be something solid or certain;

That self has yielded to not-self it seems;

Lying awake my brain far from teeming,

Circling around emptiness the way water

Dallies around a drain, drawn inexorably

Onward yet holding back too, the center

Indistinguishable from the periphery

Not even a shoreline that’s visible but

Only an oceanic sense of non-being;

Then and only then does a Golden Light

Appear, a dim beacon in the murk at first

But gathering in brightness it suffuses me

With a sense of calm and gives lie to all fear