Earthbound

Well beyond fifty and folding
As legacy leaned over doubling form,
With grasp all steady, hinged at fingers
Flecked of age, of agony’s wilt
Of forgotten years, flung
As the carefree of youth, unfurled and flayed
With weightless of wings, timeless,
Unbound –

Caught wind with patience, wound
With belly-nest of hands, a trifling soft
That nursed and nurtured
The blossom of rose and brilliance, of recall
That followed the felling of flesh
And the certain of autumn, that death
Was alive in the undertoned, echoes of earth
In what solitude the silence of maggots, have churned
With fervour, endless
Like flow of your fingers, now pressed
At the seam of your last days.