Our time here is coming to an end

A poem of mine, ‘Our time here is coming to an end,’ has won second place in a recent SL poetry competition. The contest, organised by Klannex Northmead, was for villanelles – very structured poems with a form consisting of nineteen lines, with lines one and three repeating in specific places. Here is my entry.

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Our time here is coming to an end.
The world we grew up in can barely be seen.
There is so little time left to spend.

Let’s not waste it trying to pretend,
with VHS tapings of things that have been.
Our time here is coming to an end.

There’s so much and so little to commend
of the world that we entered aged sweet sixteen.
But there is so little time left to spend.

So much from our footprint which needs now to mend.
Some of these things we might have foreseen.
Now our time here is coming to an end.

It is not our duty to defend.
Rage not against the new day’s gleam.
There is so little time left to spend.

Resist the impulse to descend.
Try to fight the urge to demean.
Our time here is coming to an end.
There is so little time left to spend.