Monday, 9 May 2016

We all were Young


For my sister Kay, on her birthday.



We all were young & it was a shining time
Of freedom & adventures we sought
The meaning of the meaning in everything, everything
Holding hands we entered the playground of the gods.

Moon through window glass
Shell pale in the morning sky
Some time in the Spring

Mounded clouds piled high were our relatives
In that corner of the field where I sang to myself
Above that small room where I sang to you;
Memories of skies, the same but different
Cloud my vision now as I walk down my street.

We are little birds
Sparrows in a sycamore
Me & my sister

We all were young yet felt such nostalgia
For what? For when? & how could we feel that?
I favoured the many-worlds hypothesis
Even then, age seven, all those lifetimes were plain to see
Spread out more like a map than a river-arrow's flight & I knew that I was dreaming

Where do stones come from?”
I went to ask me Mam
Underground,” she said

Dear Kay I'm holding your hand in a field by a stile in a wall
By a tree in a Summer of birds & flowers & sea
Every stone looks up at us with envy
For we can walk & they are stuck with geology.

It rained all day long
Nose against the window pane
Frogs in the garden

We are not aliens, our bodies are made of bread
Bread of the fields, meat of the blood of our kin
Teeth & gut & taste; hunger & fullness are stanzas & verses
In some secret song of days coming & going &
Land & sky were a state of being rather than a spatial structure.

Dipping ginger snaps
Into cups of morning tea
At Mrs. Turnbull's

I was a loner, less so than you & more afraid
I hardly knew you, nor you me we kept our secrets
I cried all the way home because I couldn't understand human cruelty
I lacked nothing but still I yearned for I didn't know what;
Something invisible, I know that you did too
& that now you have seen it, but I am fortunate;
I didn't have to die.

The three legged tank
Where Grandma boiled laundry
The smell of fruit pies

& we could see & sing & hear the song that left our throats
To fly to Heaven & we walked & ran & jumped up & down
& danced about all over the place being ourselves
Because we belonged to no-one
& the universe had many eyes & a kind face & tret us gently.

The crisp, bright pages
Of a yet unopened book
A secret moment

You jumped from the roundabout
Straight into Mam's arms.
I was afraid of banana slides
& dreamed about bridges.
The Fairy Folk showed me that
Every boundary is a place & every place is a boundary;
There is a mountain in the middle with three peaks
& a wind, a wind, a wind that carries our voices
Further than we can imagine.








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