The Surest Way Poem by Rani Turton

Each month consists of a million days.
Days that spin out endless hours and thus
Earth whirls around the sun; a mad cosmic dance
Repeated because it cannot fail.
Lives flicker and fade. Again and again.

What is life then? An essence of being?
A being of essence?
Why does pain thrust out its hand
And stand in our way; why does love
Beckon and then flee? Why do people go away?

Sometimes joy, like a mirage, promises wild things:
The end of a journey, but destiny's choice inflicts wounds
That bleed and bleed until death, like a friend,
Cuts into suffering and calls an end.

Surely there's more to it than this.
One being's individual life cannot really matter;
Though tears, like acid, can burn the soul
Until it is almost not quite entirely whole.
But to make the soul soar beyond suffering;
To remain impervious to trivial emotion
To remain suspended in exaltation day after day
To ask for nothing but to give everything away
Is perhaps the only surest way.