I am alive to this bizarre of worlds

of birth, ageing, pain and death around

where love alone serves to force renewal

and time configures through small numbers?

How long will I live?  A stretch of 100 years, ten decades

a life of 400 seasons,

a life of 1200 months,

or 2600 fortnights. 

 

If football fan represents a fortnight 

attending match at Plainmoor in Torquay,

then 2600 fans look few to me,

not a lot of fortnights,

and only 5200 weeks,

or 36,500 days. a century of life gone by. 

 

Perhaps I will die aged 75,

A life of 300 seasons

A life of just 900 months

1800 fortnights

3600 weeks known. 

 

Perhaps I will die, aged 50 years,

an accident or due to long illness,

a heart attack or King Yama’s finger.

I would have lived just 600 months

Or for 1300 fortnights or 2600 weeks

Or just some 18000 days Before inevitable descended. 

 

Perhaps I will die aged 25 years

I would have lived for three hundred months.

Perhaps I will die aged 10 years

 I would have lived for 520 weeks.

Not long. Not long. Yet long enough to feel. 

 

I sleep for quarter or third of that time

My 50 years becomes 38 years or 450 months 

or 34 years or 408 months.

An end seems not far from the beginning. 

Every week and every fortnight

I move along conveyor belt of time

interior life spells out narrative,

so years speed up with desire to do more

and find less done and not enough time left, 

the days go flashing by,

a disappearing into nothingness. 

 

I live somewhere between today 

and some tomorrow

till King Yama does the calling

and never consults for right to refuse. 

I cannot pack my bags.

nothing that I can take with me,

I say goodbye to everything now,

so I can travel lightly in time,

I know nothing to hold

into a show then ends without any applause. 

 

Not long. Not long.

Yet long enough to feel.

Yet long enough to act.