At odds

My poetry-writing self is wily
and very observant;
she’s in cahoots
with my dreaming self
and together they delight
in the mischief of undermining
my practical, everyday self.
Like Jung, they do not need to believe;
they know, whereas my agnostic self
lumbers from doubt to doubt.
They know that at death,
the body disassembles
its carbon, nitrogen, oxygen
into compost but they also know
that death is an enlarging horizon,
that the essence of self
cannot be destroyed.

I would like to die when I am dreaming
or writing poetry
instead of living
this incomplete fugue
where one part follows another
only to be interrupted
by a discordant jangle.