Poetry lyrics:

The days rush by in fleets like drifts of clouds.

We mean to note them, find their shapes or plot

their known locations, call their names out loud,

but they are here before we know they’re not.

A flock of starlings wheels and turns and dives

as one, the individual birds suppressed

by boundless number; seamlessly they fly

till darkness forces them, like us, to rest.

I’ve heard that when you die your brain reviews

your life, and pauses on the scenes that mean

the most. But what if days, like clouds, refuse

to stop? Like starlings, won’t alight, be seen?

I seek the one still point in all the roiling air.

I close my eyes, and you are there.

SHONA SIMPSON