THE LAST GIFT OF A FREE POET
Dear Uncle,
I am writing to you today to THANK YOU. Thank you for BELONGING. Thank you for being part of the FAMILY. Thank you for living your life the best you knew, the best you wanted, the best you could… you have served the life and your experience enlightens our path. Thus, everything makes proper SENSE.
I thank you MAESTRO for helping me understand a bit better the hardest lesson there is to learn, the one we don’t want to live, the one we don’t want to feel. Your WISE SOUL knew it and has made it possible.
You were coming to Burgos to celebrate Pepe and Fátima’s wedding. And also your birthday… but your ARTIST soul had a hidden plan; in fact, you were coming to Burgos to die, honoring your roots by singing its hymn one last time… sacred land where I was born … and so we could all be UNITED. Together CELEBRATING and SHARING joy and pain, union and separation. The duality of life… in just fifteen days. One last teaching that you have given us with the style, generosity and elegance which have always characterized you.
Your POET and TRAVELER soul had “commissioned” a beautiful full moon day to return your body to the blessed soil where I will die… That moon, guardian of life’s greatest mysteries that has lightened up your nights in Ibiza, has also shone brightly the day of your soul’s new journey back to the LIGHT, accompanied by the UNITED voices of Nabucco’s choir that Aunt Carmen has made play for you, for all…
Paradoxes of life. It was written in the calendar your sister Ana gave me: “June 14th 2022, FULL MOON in Sagittarius begins to appear in Spain at 13.51”. Just the time your body went into the purifying fire so that your soul could finally be free. FREEDOM… the ideal so present throughout your life.
And just the same day when the Festival of Goodwill takes place; people all over the world LINK in THOUGHT to celebrate the spiritual potential of humanity to unite so that peace, freedom and goodwill can flourish.
Coincidence or what?…
But the MAGIC of life doesn’t end here. I have to tell you a little secret. It seems my soul also had a hidden plan.
Five years ago my hands started to write a poem. It sprang like the water that has just found a way out, but suddenly dries up. My intellectual mind “wanted to” (had to) finish it, but it was simply impossible. I surrendered. Resigned and in silence I kept it (no ending, no title and no recipient…) in the notebook where seeds ripen until its their time to bloom.
The muses appeared 18 days before your birthday (may 29th) to give me the ending, the title… the recipient. Sharing it with you, writer to writer, poet to poet, soul to soul… this was going to be your birthday present.
While I was editing and illustrating the poem to send it to you to Ibiza I learnt that you were finally coming to the wedding, and that we were also going to celebrate your birthday, all together. —Being able to give it to you in person, another gift of life — I thought.
When I went to print it they told me, oddly enough, that it was wrongly laid out and that I needed to add more pages so it could all fit... I went back home and asked those tiny flying fairies to help me… and suddenly words for a blank page were revealed; the dedication:
To Javier Abril de Coó,
a man in whose name resounds a golde lyre
and beats the heart of a free poet.
In that moment I “felt” it. A voice inside me was telling me that this was not a birthday present… it was a farewell.
Although I was able to give it to you in person, a part of you was no longer with us, so you could not read it. You will like to learn that it now rests with you in Ibiza, and that I want to open it and share it, along with these words, with other travelers (like you, like me, like we all are…) whose path may bring them here:
How amazing LIFE can be! The arrival of the full moon closed the circle; it “full”filled it. I accepted your silent invitation to accompany you to the end. I allowed my self to be guided and holding your invisible hand and well rooted to earth with your Naïve Truth in my bag I was able to look. Brave, face to face; open to live an encounter with her, with DEATH.
I felt the pain and the fear emerge from deep inside my being. I let them go through me but I didn’t let them capture me. I breathed… only then I could hug them, acknowledge them and give them a place. PAIN and FEAR, TOGETHER in my heart. And at that very moment I felt as if something “dead” inside me was released and went also towards the fire… I then understood; life and death go hand in hand; if you are afraid to die… you are afraid to live.
My “I” from the future will read: 14th June 2022, when the FULL MOON in Sagittarius was beginning to appear in Spain at 13.51 I released my fear to die. That day a PHILOSOPHER soul taught me that in UNITY lies understanding, love and freedom; and that in death, as in life… both POETRY and BEAUTY come to dance.
No coincidence is that.
It is your great gift to us. Your legacy.
¡GRACIAS JAVIER!