Everything

Everything’s so full of lasts,
quivering, on the brink.
Time thrusts forward.
The body vehicle will not cease
decaying, children growing
ever distant, the umbilicus unraveling
to unbearable lengths
as we circumvent this world.

Pause pause pause!

People pass by in a slurry
of incessant transformation.

Surely there must be a limit?
(There is not.)

Death, inbuilt in those I’ve born
is yet half grown in me;
close to flowering powerfully out
of my grandmother’s powdery furrows.

Routine lends the illusion of solace:
tranquilised to truth we sleep
fitfully, swaddled against horror.

* First published in Bluepepper