There’s always an edge here
- Editorial Staff
- 10 hours ago
- 1 min read
by James Samuel Norcliffe
and we’re living uneasily on it:
it’s the line between the edge
of the leaf and nothingness,
the fragile, edgy place we pretend
to believe is constant even
as the cliffs fall into the sea
and we tell ourselves when
the fossils are revealed: ferns,
ammonites, brachiopods
who, like us, lived lives
and wallowed in the sun
in a soupy, syrupy time on
the outer edge of a small
planet in the vastness
of the universe, we tell
ourselves all will be well as
we run our thumbs carelessly
along the sharp edge of time.
New Zealand poet James Norcliffe has published eleven collections of poetry including Dark Days at the Oxygen Café (VUP) 2016, Deadpan (Otago University Press, 2019) and Letter to Oumuamua (Otago University Press, 2023). A Day Like no Other: Selected Poems will be published by Otago University Press early next year. In 2022 he was awarded the NZ Prime Minister’s Award for Literary Achievement in poetry.