Steely cold-light – naked in its selfless
prurient awakening from night –
myopically refracted through layers of
besmirched glass to a ghastly grime filled dawn.
Then sudden outpourings, a jerking spurt,
a life enhancing gush and sudden warmth –
invigorating body, flesh and bone.
Then by embracing twists of DNA
or some small re-arrangement of a strand...
A lidless be-scaled beast stretching its limbs
in splayed supplication to the sun,
as if to worship some primeval god.
Sol invictus, or so the ancients told –
yet the cold stillness of this lizard thing,
frozen loam turned to intransigent stone,
matter turned to matter from living bone.
The game changes, turning in on itself
to some other fate of the dice’s throw...
A giant herbivore mulching on the
battered bark of a desiccated tree,
the visceral stink of this mass of flesh
and bone so very different from our own.
Or garish insects impaled on a pin,
provide the sequence for some quite other thing
– brainless, limbless, anythingless but me.
Re-shuffle, take your places one and all
the cards are stacked, the dealing starts...
I saw the spectre of a footless child
clomping round M&S on booted stumps
and a young women, three strokes within the year.
Or Hawking, body crippled by disease,
soaring the heavens in an urge to know,
or those with the body of Adonis,
gifted without any real need to know.
No good complaining folks, you lose you lose,
You pays your due’s when all’s said and done...
And what if we are barely what we say,
but only captives of our DNA...
subject to the game and by acquired
twists and turns of the incumbent double
helix throw – pirouetting in a dance.
Whether fish, snark or crow, all are subject
to the dice’s throw... all elements of chance.
YOU ARE READING
Still Waters
PoetryA collection of metered poems of life, death and everything in between.
