I glimpse
From time to time
That thought
That floats
With the dust motes
In the
Unswept corners
Of my mind
The indisputable fact
that when we cease to be
the universe
Without me
Carries on
Without pause.
It’s obvious, really –
But sometimes it catches
On a loose thread
In my head
And I find myself
Unravelling.
My bones may splinter
Synapses wither
Skin split and shrivel
Like a nectarine
Neglected
At the back of the fridge.
And still the world
Plunges onwards–
The train timetables
won’t come undone
My bus will still leave
At quarter past one
Sleeping babies
Will be awoken
My car's handbrake
Will still be broken
Rosebuds
won’t falter
In unfurling,
The grit and the oyster
won’t pause
In Pearling.
But that which has budded off
Briefly
To form a separate self
Dissipates.
Like morning mists
Immense
And amorphous
That condense
Into dewdrops
And shimmer
In the shivering dawn,
Only to evaporate
By noon.
These
Atomic
Fragments
Bound together
By happenstance
Will return to the worms -
Redistributed by
Mycelial fingertips
To coalesce again
In some new molecular structure
In an endless looping
Of moments
And matter.
I run the knife-edge
Of the thought
Across my lower lip,
And there is a pang
Of what could be panic -
But it’s slower that that.
A dull ache
Left in its wake:
A cellular fatigue
From carrying the weight
Of all this
Endless existence.
I find myself
Yearning
To cease this
Churning,
When we may
Find the way
To a centre
Of sorts.
The nucleus of
Each atom
Dissolving -
Absolving us
Of this
Implacable
Metabolic
Thrust –
Leave me be,
Let me rust.
July 2023