When One Is on the Verge of Leaving the World
When one is on the verge of leaving this world
the stresses on the atmosphere are increasing,
and the war-makers gloat over their annihilations
and many others die quicker than it takes for
your own death to complete its cycle, even when
it’s ‘mini-stroke’ after ‘mini-stroke’ and you’ve
only got one eye to the world. In the time between
emergency and operation, in the time blood
pressure drops critically in ICU to be persuaded
to rise but not rise too far, the killers have killed
so many others, with or without ‘pre-existing
conditions’ (other than living), and some repairing
from ailments, others just finding a way through
to dawn. These lives all terminated, these lives
burnt in the name of other lives and also to show-
case hardware, to make an exhibition of power.
When one is on the verge of leaving this world,
bushland is replaced by a playing field on which
a ball moves between profiles, the slices of life.
John Kinsella
