I'm filling leaking containers
with years
I had not presumed;
fractured days
I'd just as soon left closed
but for the moment
a bag of heated rice
allows for something
close to comfort,
and John Bauldie's
forty years in coming
investigation
into Nobel laureate Dylan
as the young artist
flies the exquisite my way
Night rises
across its midst,
hauling me sleeplessly
into my seventy-second round
I'm mindful of all that isn't
in all that is,
in a totemy mimicry of better days,
in this late me,
the swell of what's to come
rising inside,
the moon an indifferent spectator
as this self runs its course,
fading
into the hum
of fridge and freezer
Gunwald the Cat
so close to my face
he looks huge
like a towering A1 Abrams tank
Death
is the restless shiver
of dawn
on a freezing morn
I can hear it squeak
its rheumatic joints
behind the day
as familiar faces slowly sink
into oblivion
at the outer perimeter
of awareness
It's birthdie!
I feel the ripples
of out-of-body sensations
hurrying down my skin
panicky scouting all atoms
flocking
for an all-directional migration;
myself
a reusable supply of elements
Life is inevitable
It comes as a surprise
Non-existence
is a silent journey
beneath a Viking stone ship
It's all there, in your birthdie!