“Cromarty, falling slowly”. The sound of the shipping forecast and the origin of this poem. For some reason, whenever I listen to that calm, quiet voice announcing storms and gales, often far out at sea, I can’t help but visualize a skipper, hunched over his radio in the midst of watery mayhem. Anyway, this is my take on life’s journey from beginning to end. I hope you enjoy it.
 

 
Dropped at birth
we fall at different rates
towards the silent silver sea
that we call death

Some crash, hit hard
to break their hearts and limbs on impact
wreckage for the gulls and fish –
while others plunge with silent grace
to slip beneath the painless
mirrored surface
merging, two to one
then gone

And as we fall
we’re scattered by
the vagrant winds of time –
our rate determined,
spin imparted by light gusts of fortune –
cascading fragments
shaping the descent of man

Some fall together
clumped like seed heads
tumbling pairs or groups
migrating down a slope of days –
While others drop alone
head down, unseen
to splash in lonely, silent darkness
unnamed, unknown
and unregarded

Children too impact
their span complete
while old bones float a mile above
and watch quite helpless
tears sown on the geostrophic wind
to join the splash specked ocean far below

Yet in that silent silver sea
that we call death
is joining
cell with every other cell
as one with rivers, sap and soil
a climacteric integration

As early as when sperm meets egg
that solitary soul is pushed
out over the ancestral edge
to dive a single span of moments
to its end

What we call life
is but a leisurely free fall from grace –
a terminal descent
like Mrs Cromarty
falling slowly through the gale of time

 
Climacteric a critical period in human life, in which some great bodily change takes place.
Geostrophic (wind) a virtual force used to account for the change in direction of the wind relative to the surface of the earth arising from the earth’s rotation.
 

© David Hermelin 2017