People often see Death as the enemy in reality it is a process in the same way birth is. One day I will bury my father but I do not fear it because it is what it means to be alive.

Time is perhaps the vindictive as it erodes us with age, whilst death is the release.

My father has a health problem, which is worrying him greatly though he has yet to see the doctor to see how serious it is. He has the "waiting for the axe to fall" state of mind.

Axe

A single silk strand
holds the executioners hand

in the spaces between the spaces
the folds in the faces

time holds fate in line
gnaws uncertainty to the bone

draws the mind across the silk
makes us all

see the axe fall.