A pause, pregnant,
at last conceives a newborn carcass.
The carcass may first float at the surface, but lungs
deflate. When all is said and spent,
the moment slips beneath
the waves, in time tumbling
through the patterns of deep sleep.
The carcass is trapped
between the sheets of the seabed,
tangled in lost decades.
Maybe our last moment is
petrified by the pitch,
a stone swan song.
Slipping between the ribs of the occasion,
An assemblage remains to carve minutely
through time, cutting its teeth on those lost decades.
It is most common to see the carcass at night,
Sunken in more recent years
and holding its breath.
