Truth

2 + 2 = 4: that's a universal
truth, but a metre of empty space
is its own empty face, a non-sequitur
of blank horizon.

Is it a universal fact that life
must consume? The flower needs water
to bloom. But the flower too needs
death, and the worm - to churn

a meal into a graveyard of fertiliser, 
a seal between root and anchor point
and a tenuous joint. But life fattens
on life, grows stronger.

Its rights grow longer, and stronger
and tighter. A man eats a meal alone
of meat cleaved from the bone
thankful for the silence of the plate.

But elsewhere, rocked, is life a-gait,
screaming noiselessly to deaf ears, hungry eyes.
2 + 2 = 4, a metre is a hundred-mate;
a woman eats life, makes life, and feeds. 

And, somewhere else, history dies.