I hold a shard of stone. It’s seashell from ancient Gondwana, over two hundred million years old. It was just lying there, on the surface of the earth as we tread it, and bound to it by the force of gravity.

In far away England, right across the world from where I am, marvelling, a waif, afflicted, passes away.

Everything is connected they say. It was a haiku by Sutcliff I sent to the survivors (of which I am one) of a cousin who tired of being – breathed for by a machine. Asked them to turn it off, to turn away.

Perhaps the gravitational pull of the moon, the ebb and flow of the oceans, provided the impetus to embrace the final moment.

cutting loose from
the explanatory ooze
a last wave

…
The haiku by Sutcliff:

moon shadows
your breathing
now silent

…
Linked to Frank J Tassone’s