Death When Challenged Life

I And Death once told an oft defeated life: Look, life’s no life if lived on a knife’s edge, In struggle for survival soaked in strife, Alive with life, look at me— a red rage. And just next breath away on edge of knife, I oft hear poor life pleading from deathbed: I'm tired of daily dose of death so rife, Pray, tell me Death, how long ere I'm all-dead? To this I straighten up to say, stiff head: Moments do when like long minutes may stretch, Minutes when look like endless hours instead, Hours hang for days, days for years, time when etch… Then be the time O for life’s beatitude, Then I descend from my high altitude. II What altitude? Mean this row seems to me, A voice is heard: where’s freedom if at all? Life nor yet death, none on pedestal be, Death changes only bricks of prison wall. Life traces a small stretch of graph nigh vague, Its poem, metered nor a measured bird, A fledgling ‘tis keen to fly peg by peg, What’s death but breath not taken nor bestirred? Eons pass sans measure for endless time, Nor the clocks tick, nor dare at hours to chime, Rocks break unto sands, time stills without rhyme, Stones grind unto grains, earth turns into lime, The journey of countless births starts with life, Not defeated but triumphs, time’s when rife. ___________________________________________ Crown of Sonnets | 07.08.2012, revised May 2023 |