Death and Life – Mary Joan Gerson
How does the twig become a bower?
The bud a flower?
The crusted earth reseeded?
Life dwells in death and Death quickens Life
No passport needed across this border
No petitions, no exceptions, no amnesty honored
We are perpetual citizens in both
Doesn’t the circle of seasons promise rebirth?
Do the stars offer solace?
Isn’t a sunset both an ending and a beginning
Don’t we hold each other tight in life and in death?
Isn’t that eternity?
Mary-Joan Gerson, Ph.D., ABPP, is an Adjunct Clinical Professor and Supervisor at the New York University Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis. She is the Founding President of Section VIII, Couples and Family Therapy, of Division 39 of the American Psychological Association, and has served as Co-Chair of Division 39’s Committees on Psychoanalysis and Health, and Psychoanalysis and Community. She has presented and written widely on the integration of psychoanalytic, family systemic and attachment theory, including a full length book The Embedded Self: An Integrative Psychodynamic and Systemic Perspective on Couple and Family Therapy 2nd edition, Routledge, 2009, as ell as articles focused as development form a psychoanalytic perspective, and the experience and challenge of chronic medical illness. She is the author of 5 books for children which celebrate the folklore of Nigeria, Brazil and Mexico. One of them, Why the Sky is Far Away, has been produced as a musical and has won numerous awards in children’s literature.