I knew his name, Anubis, when I saw him,
as if he spoke to me in my half sleep.

There he stood near the wall at the sliding glass door
of the house I rented, sight unseen.

He looked at me as I rounded the corner from the
laundry room off the garage. The room I’d yet to see.

One eye, a bright ruby. The other, deep glowing sapphire.
The finest gemstones worthy of an Egyptian God.

The Egyptian God of Death.

“You walked the temples of Egypt,” she had told me years ago.
the psychic, Irene, “offering prayers from the living to the dead.”

“A priestess of the highest order in a golden age,” she said.
How bizarre that now I work with computers and play the tarot.

He must be my friend, Anubis, guarding my back door, in the house
I never saw before I came. What shock when the haunts arrived.

How does one speak to a God as a friend?

How does one speak to death knowing death is a passage into life?

“Yes.”

He finally replied, my dear friend, Anubis.
My guardian, having endured too many.

“The Son of God is tired of bringing you back.”

Yes, Love, I know.
He told me so in a dream.

“This I say to he who kills:
Do not cheat my day!

Do not cheat me of my lair!

Oh, you of evil ways, I say unto thee
I will dine upon your souls
at the gate of my king!

For you, death is a passage into death!

For you, death is a passage into me!

And I am very hungry!

I rage and attack the murderers!

I anguish at the wars!

I growl and snarl at the suicides!
The self-hate I deplore!

Oh, homicide turned inward
and outward upon itself

You cannot escape your hell through me
for within me is the most bitter end.”

Precious friend, you are life everlasting.
You guard the gates of eternity.
You are loved, yet feared by those
who know nothing of love.

“Yes.
Yet you do not fear me.
Fear not, for the Lord, thy God, is with me, always.
And I AM with you.”

Yes.