Synkroniciti is proud to feature the artists of our newest online issue, “Intersections,” available for download here: https://synkroniciti.com/the-magazine/purchase-individual-issues/.
Please join us in welcoming poet Gerard Sarnat with two profound reflections on grief and death. “Candle Snuffer” and “Wail Watcher Dry Run” speak of that surreal time when a loved one departs this world. If you have been a care-giver for someone who was sick and dying, you know the paradox of death: a mercy, a relief and the end of illness and at the same time an end of togetherness, a final curtain separating us from one another, at least physically. There is an energy that translates and changes as we end our lives. Buddhists speak of the “bardo,” a state in between lives where the spirit moves without the body. Gerry invokes this as well as Jewish spirituality in a beautiful, mystical way that reminds us that we experience the truth of life and death in subjective ways. Different descriptions and interpretations may be describing the same thing, or perhaps different parts of the same thing. We know so little about where we are all going and what this life means and that’s part of what makes death mysterious and sacred, even as it hurts deeply.
Read Gerry’s mystical poems in Synkroniciti’s “Intersections” issue.
Dr. Gerard Sarnat won San Francisco Poetry’s 2020 Contest, Poetry in Arts First Place Award/Dorfman Prize, and has been nominated for handfuls of Pushcarts/Best of Net Awards. Gerry is widely published including in Gargoyle, Main Street Rag, New Delta Review, Brooklyn Review, San Francisco Magazine, LA Review, and NY Times as well as by Harvard, Stanford, Chicago and Columbia presses. He’s authored the collections Homeless Chronicles (2010), Disputes (2012), 17s (2014), Melting the Ice King (2016).
Gerry’s a physician who has built and staffed clinics for the marginalized as well as a Stanford professor/healthcare CEO. Currently he’s devoting energy/resources to deal with climate justice, and serves on Climate Action Now’s board. Gerry has been married since 1969 with three kids/six grandsons, and is looking forward to future granddaughters. Check out his website: gerardsarnat.com.