We Ask You to Be the Ghost

I'm reading about immortality
Because I'm curious about subjects
That can never have been experienced
By any available expert. Death,
Divinity, superhuman powers,
Immortality by definition
Are outside of the experience
Of all living, mortal, human authors.
It's not a question of whether such things
Could possibly exist. Some do; some don't.
Death, however beyond living knowledge,
Appears to be the only certainty.
The rest are fantasies of fighting death.
Loss, that would be the window we see through
When we come to the wall that is the end.
It's why we hand the calligraphy brush
To the zen monk on his death bed. It's why
The Victorians collected last words.
Toe-knuckle cracking, table-top rapping
Ouija board charlatans aside, we know
No thick descriptions over the transom
Will be tossed to us from the other side.
We wait breathlessly by the near breathless,
Knowing the certainty of looming loss,
And try to glean that last glimpse from the edge
Of the light that goes through the looking glass.