“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Jane hadn’t shown me any of these poems as she wrote them over a period of some four and a half years. She didn’t keep them from me deliberately. In one way they’re like casual jottings that she left half finished and unseen in her journals, until I found them when I began searching for fresh material for the frontmatter of this Volume 2 of Dreams. In another way they contain deep and private insights, ranging from her free, marveling childhood yearning and intuitive knowing up to her present physically impaired condition—her arthritic-like “symptoms,” as we call them—and beyond to the final state of her work after her death. I found each poem to be a revelation, stirring sad and questioning wells of emotion. I can’t help but mourn as I write this piece; I tell myself that had I seen the poems as Jane produced them I might have learned a little more about her each time; I might have been able to help her more than I had over the years. At the same time, it’s as though she’s just finished the poems, so fresh and consistent do they seem to me. And as I reread them I understand once again that my wife is still teaching me about her courage, and about the ineffable, unending mystery of the universe that each one of us is creating moment by moment, separately and all together.

I offer each one of these poems with a brief commentary. The spelling and punctuation are always Jane’s own. The third poem is the only one she formally titled.

i didn’t want to sleep
for fear the world would disappear
but new days kept coming and coming.
the old ones slipped away one
by one, but were always replenished.

I was walking past the world
one day,
half deciding not to stay,
when I saw you standing there,
ten years ahead of me in time
but so close in space
that I reached out
and touched your arm.

I’ve done the best I could
with thy sweet heritage of blood,
one creature like all the rest
born from your power and benevolence,
graced to share in what you are
for your love’s multiplication
knows no prejudice,
so let me humbly state my thanks

I’ve always transferred my life to letters,
and one day it will reside
exclusively in written nouns and vowels,
clean paragraphs
distilled from mysterious life’s days.
Even before death’s event
I plan my mind’s resting place
as if there is a second life
in thought’s products that defies
the brain’s shorter span, and rises
sans blood, flesh, hand or eye,
self-contained, truly alive at last;
like some mental balloon
set on a safe course finally
through unexplored skies
when the hand that holds it
lets it go.