Milling

Every head in here is grey,
Which is a good thing, since it’s
A cancer treatment center.

Kids with cancer go elsewhere,
But you’d notice young adults.
Young adults would look like kids

In this context, even those
Fortyish or thereabouts.
Here, there are the elderly,

Far side of the recent plague,
Most far side of retirement,
Many far side of mean age

Of death, all here to survive,
The pile-up of reluctance
At the last lip of the cliff.

These are not those who sail clear.
These will stumble down the slope,
Bump and tumble off ledges

Before the fall. Look around.
Which do you think, in this room
Waiting, will be the last one,

Last body, self mostly gone,
Clinging to a twiggy branch,
Floating above the abyss?