This is Episode 66 of Poems for the Speed of Life.

Today's poem is "Antidotes to Fear of Death" by Rebecca Elson.

Rebecca Elson died in 1999 at the age of just 39, ten years after she was first diagnosed with non-Hodgkins Lymphoma. 

As well as writing poetry, she was a scientist, studying astronomy at Cambridge University and being among the first researchers to view images of space from the Hubble Space Telescope in the 1990s. 

This poem was included in her only collection, A Responsibility to Awe, which was published posthumously. 

Death is at once a great inevitability and still terrifying. This poem might offer some small, but timeless and eternal solace to anyone afflicted by anxious thoughts about the end of our time on earth.

You can read the poem here.

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Music Credit:

Once Upon a Time by Alex-Productions | https://onsound.eu/  | Music promoted by https://www.free-stock-music.com