Final Embrace

An Elegy

Final embrace to dust can seem tender
absolution from the toil of trying 
to be free in bond of time, the sweetest
and most bitter, the sovereign of shackles

the horrible maw of the world eats us
we are food for its unrelenting change
yet we flash signals of fleeting glory
as when goldfinch swoops a catenary 

death rejects nothing that was ever born
accommodates all it annihilates
time is mother who devours her children
as is ordained in incomprehension

far stars are lost we imagine we see
by the faintest traces of passing light