FOREVER MORE

We crave eternity – But why?

It’s simple: we don’t want to die.

Against the Pyrenean snow

the sky’s a lake of cobalt blue

through which a goshawk rows

with strokes that wing your back.

Your skis bite crusted snow.

Rooted, you lean to the slope

and watch the sailing bird.

Let me hold on to this, you pray,

let it never end.

Sky, wings and mountain crests,

pause in your flight,

an eternal beating over Val d’Arran.

But cobalt blue’s a frequency –

a wavelength of four-seventy millimicrons rounded down -,

which, if time stopped, would cease to be.

The goshawk’s wing-beats would be stilled;

it would not even fall

but would congeal

against an unseen sky.

Your heart meanwhile would stop,

you’d not be here,

and nor would I.

We want to concentrate time in our fist –

Get wise!   Eternity does not exist.