An Uneasy Birth Poem by Patti Masterman

Surrounded on all sides by ghosts
Ghosts still becoming and ghosts returning
And the ones that never left me.
Time was, it seemed necessary
To see the original ingredient in each day
But it's getting harder to find recipes
Too many years, too many changes
Even the mirror harbors a fledgling phantom
Bland eyes and parchment skin
Too many rotations around the planet
Gravity squats on everything after a while
Greeting each successive season the same
Whether harsh or benign
Nothing new under the stars above, not anymore
Under the flat emotion, an iron foundry bulges
Bristles with new battlements
Restraining concretions of sedimented layer
More like a gravestone or monument on the surface now
Lacking any utilitarian purpose; a precancerous thickening
Under the veined marble plaster relief
The worn pistons ever less elastic
Static artifact of white noise.
Disassembling a life takes so much
Of the available time and energy
Just when there's an excess of neither:
A long labor just to expel the corpse.