by Nolo Segundo

Staying in this world starts to feel strange 
when you’ve pushed past 3 score and ten,
each year going by with increasing speed
or so it seems as time itself starts looking
a bit unreal, more imagination than substance.

You can’t help but think, wonder actually,
what might come next—you know it’s not
extinction, cessation, extermination, ending,
...a quenching of the life force...of you.

You’ve known for 2/3 of a rather long life
that something comes next, after the body
you will no longer need is buried or burnt.
You know it will be some world, but you
cannot say which world your soul will 
make a new home in—but if you are right
about the God you love, then love will be
waiting for you…

Nolo Segundo, pen name of L.J.Carber, in his 70s, became a published poet in over 120 literary journals/anthologies in 11 countries. (such as Heart of Flesh, Ekstasis, Time of Singing) and 2 trade book collections: The Enormity of Existence [2020] and Of Ether and Earth [2021]. The titles, like much of his work, reflect the awareness he’s had since having an NDE whilst almost drowning in a Vermont river: that he has—is—a consciousness that predates birth and survives death, what poets and other people once called the soul. Nominated for the Pushcart Prize 2022 by Spirit Fire Review, he’s retired from teaching English/ESL in America, Japan, Taiwan and Cambodia (leaving there before the time of the Killing Fields), who has been married 42 years to a smart and beautiful Taiwanese woman.