Whirlpool

Stefanie Elrick

The world is a whirlpool and it’s tugging at our limbs.

It’s there;

A subtle snare,

Awaiting waifs too tired to swim.

 

All that churning, all the chaos, all the yearning curled within,

It’s the product of our makeup:

It’s the gravity of skin.

The human condition

Is not an unfamiliar disease,

It’s a sound that shudders softly through the ground

And strips the trees.

It’s a greedy, needy appetite,

A garish gorging of the eyes:

For we’ve little use for all this crap,  progression’s just a guise.

 

Surely steady shifting seasons shouldn’t shattered joy or reason,

But as sunlight slides beyond our sights shade hides what we believed in.

 

Try stop you’re grieving, this fear should be fleeting

Paint a daybreak bright on your ceiling.

Then when drizzle has sodden your socks and your soul,

We can huddle like penguins to keep out the cold;

Seasonally affected but sadness deflected,

A shield built to stun away chill and reject it:

Project it to new forms, ingest it in hollowed bones,

It’s our mission in dark days to keep our friends toes warmed.