Time drifts away,
as mist fades on the mountain.
The world itself is hardly more real,
the living waters springing
from life’s fountain run dry,
leaving discarded bones
bleaching in the sun.

There is no molecule
but strives to be the whole
(or if it can’t encompass that, a soul).
Molecules of arms and legs and brain
are rebels all and would be free again;
the pageant of our days and hours
runs till we lose our feeble powers.

We are children playing out our days
with sandcastles and fantasies
until the turning the tide erases
what we have worked hard to raise,
struggled to keep and called our own;
fragments of things, at best on loan.

Upwards
our thoughts might usefully aspire;
nothing down here
needs building any higher.

Deal justly with your neighbour
and make of him your friend
and, in your inner garden, labour
until you reach your end.

.

.