At the threshold of life and death the air is still, like a held breath. A quiet reverence pervades the room as life's longest companion waits quietly in the corner, heart full with the love of a life well lived and heavy with its bounty.

The ineffable beauty of precious moments shimmer, catching the light in wet eyes and warming hands held in vigil. Tears baptise its farthest reaches. Acceptance finally blesses the fight and its quiet surrender.

Death's dark hand extended in cold comfort, its veils revealing promise beyond the void. Only the old stories make sense in this quiet place. Life gallops unabated outside the window as black cockies wail across the splitting sky.

Auden's clocks never stop tocking, their frantic denial as hollow as the platitudes of the truly afraid. Cosseted old men on benches bang gavels and wave old parchment and still refuse the ticking truth that twitches under their thinning skin. As though their borrowed power holds any sway over those who exist at this precarious borderlands. As though their loaded rules and flimsy control have any bearing on the holy relationship between life and death. This dying world built on the wanton destruction of its brimming creation is finally giving way and all we can smell is burning, all we can hear is shouting and all we can do is held in quivering palms.

What yet thrums within is life unabated, precarious and full of wonder. Now we know what is precious, to be loved well before it is lost. It runs in our hearts like a hammer, pumping blood into sinew and courage into corpuscles. Buried instincts break through soil and sorrow. We lean heavy and grateful on the souls that speak grief's mother tongue.

Each of us rise shaking to meet the reaper and stare down his long valleys. One rainy day to befriend his corvids and learn the language of their croaking and cawing. Another to leave our old self at the gate and step out of a world worn shell. Wildness returns from its exile and takes life by its thin skin. Strange creatures make nests in our hair. Death smiles his welcome and we nod in return.

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Some things in life cannot be fixed. They can only be carried.
~ Tim Lawrence

Art by endocathexis
Words c. Kerrie Basha 2022