Pulling up Roots

I have made my home here:
	how should I go
and wrench my own roots with
slow yet deliberate hands

and take us to other lands:
	new, not old, for
there is no going back even
though we live in places in
our heads that don't exist
and think that all our plans
and doings could take us
there if only we had the luck.

Going back is going forward
to know the place for the
first time, not as it has
been, as I remember as I
stretch my keen hands to 
touch the unreal.

How will I sing its song
truly of today when I am
covered by a blanket of
love and loss, regret
also for what was, and was 
not.

I  must remember that the Great Hands
are in control of
		all the clocks
and spread out the roads
before me as if I had a 
choice and could choose and
eat one like a chocolate
out of a box.

She is not there, she is not
there I only am what carries
her thither my bone of her bone -
how then can I live
when my breath is old
and I walk beneath a different
sun?  If only I had done
differently then, I would not be
here, scrabbling at the hard
ground and trying to dig
for roots that are so deep-in
there is no moving them

except to fear, wrench
and break, perhaps for the last
time, all I have made.

And there is no-one to tell
it is right or it is wrong -
we all make our own mistakes
alone in the crowd - shoulder-to
shoulder and arm-in-arm
with strangers, us, doing
all the same but

blind to it, as if all of us,
every one, were singly here
and alone, and all our
lives were strange, unique,
instead collected and
collective, intertwined, but
not in our minds.

And so I tread my well-
paved path, away, as if I
go toward a wholesome thing
that will make me glad,
today

when I know that I am
no more myself here
	than away.

And it doesn't matter
where we are for all our
heart goes with our feet
and the travelling does
not make us meet
more truth over there.

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