Nolo Segundo, pen name of retired English/ESL teacher [America, Japan, Taiwan, Cambodia]  L.j Carber, became a published poet in his 8^th decade in over 170 literary journals in 13 countries. A trade publisher has released 3 collections in paperback on Amazon: The Enormity of Existence [2020]; Of Ether and Earth [2021]; and Soul Songs [2022]. These titles reflect an awareness he’s had for over 50 years since having an NDE whilst almost drowning in a Vermont river: That he has—IS—a consciousness that predates birth and survives death, what poets since Plato have called the soul.

Sylvia Plath Died in a Bell Jar                                    

Sylvia Plath died in a bell jar,
and I know what that is like:
how scary the vacuum, how brittle
a wretched little human feels inside
opaque walls of touchless glass,
alone in a cavern of orderless madness.

The bell jar holds but three goodies:
the lunatic, the horror, and the longing,
longing for a banished world of beauty
and desire, senses and apples, children
and wine, yesterday and tomorrow…

but longing most for freedom, to be
free and pulsing like God-given amoeba
between scaleless walls of holy cement
binding earth and eternity--the freedom 
to feel as only a tiny human may feel
naked in a hot-cold world….

Sylvia, Sylvia, I read your poems, 
I read your book, I even read your life,
but Sylvia, lover I never had, it remains
you gassed yourself like Nazi and Jew
in one
and I do not reproach you for this, but 
only ask, did the death balance the life?

Tasting Eternity

My old friend and I went to a restaurant for lunch,
a ramshackle little place, but my friend told me 
the food was great—and it was! Three different 
chicken curries, a lovely lamb curry, and a half-
dozen veggies, and mango drinks to wash it down.

I suppose we visited the buffet more times than we 
should have but we were talking philosophy as we 
always did when we got together and speaking of
God and the soul and the meaning of life really 
can make you hungry--then my friend said he 
believed in God but had trouble with Eternity--
it seemed scary, terrifying even to think of time
going on forever, endlessly, a road never ending.

I laughed a little, then smiled at my old friend--
‘THIS is eternity! ‘ I told him, ‘Right now, this
moment as we eat this delicious curry and try 
to figure out the meaning of our existence’.
I swallowed a mouthful of lamb korma and
laughed again-- ‘wherever we exist is eternity,
and we always exist somewhere, and time is
an illusion, time does not exist, except as a 
moment’-- And the next moment, I asked him
if he had room for the rice pudding….