sun trance

we lie in bed,
the sunlight filters through moth holes in the curtain,
and lands in golden spots on my shoulder,
you joke with me,
saying the light is coming from inside me,
that the spots will become larger and larger until i'm nothing but sunlight,
it seems a beautiful thing to me,
to spend one's days becoming more and more full of light,
until, at some point, the ego is burnt away,
and all that remains is sunlight,
later, when i am in the garden,
bare to the waist and hand-watering the beans,
i feel the sun on my skin and think again about what you said,
i crouch down, squatting amongst the beans,
breathing in the green of them,
the heat on my back lulling me into a sort of a trance,
as the dry air drinks the moisture from my skin,
and bees suckle nectar from blossoms,
i think that maybe it is happening,
that maybe the sun is shining from inside as well as out,
breaking through little by little,
i feel the hunger go out of me,
there is no “otherness”,
no “I-ness”,
the ego is lit,
smoldering,
parts of it becoming ash and falling away,
i think that maybe this is what dying is,
not painful,
not frightening,
a surrender,
an abandoning of the ego, the self,
i think that maybe this can happen to a person before the physical body dies,
that maybe as the ego dies, selflessness, humility is born,
i feel an energy run through my body that brings with it,
a tenderness for and understanding of what everything is,
and where the speck of dust that i call myself lies amidst it all,
and then it is all gone,
i breathe in the green of the beans once more,
then rise to finish the watering