Gold Mining
We extract what we can while still in a body
You sit, my friend, at this late stage —
not old, not young either
stripped by summer’s moist claim in
thickening swells of blood & body
breath high in crumbling lungs &
caught in sagging curves somewhere
on a continuum between active & infirm.
So you slip bare feet on cooling tiles
look up at the great gloved hands of God
surgically white & waiting —
each cloud a bird of prey
as the heart seeks its morning pills
& that walk you intended in soft green hills
suddenly withdraws its claim.
The one field of hope is razed —
you know no-one’s coming
& so the cry goes out if only to oneself —
I need connection. Why do I stay away?
You pause to reflect long observation
of the world’s behaviour to see the natural extinction
of the thirst for pleasure, thirst for living
& thirst for knowledge, which you did not foresee.
Life’s bitter pill is sure defeat
the pull of entropy, the tug of penumbral shade —
another day, another day you complain
not quite dead & waiting for a sign
or voice of God
only to discover you are knocking at the gate
not for the end but the disappearance of this ‘I’
unknown to you yet cause of all your pain.
Copyright Simon Heathcote
