The Name

	A tiny morning hour,
	still dark, I hear the
	wind in the trees outside -
	Spring winds are cold
	winds, in the mountains.

A fresh wind blows through
me:  disorientating, making
cold, disturbing all
my dust.  I have years
of it, a lifetime of it,
to blow away, till I get
to the bedrock of me.

I don't know where that is,
or what it is.  I am
Day-Lily, dying and rising,
dead-heading and re-
blooming like a delicate
flower.  I still have colour

but all flowers transplanted
take time to bed-in.  My
roots are exposed, hanging,
I don't feel the new

ground yet, whether the
soil is rich or bare.  I know
many fears as to
pests and hazards:  there
is no other place now.
I must thole the weather
and do my best to grow.

In a moment, between the 
ticks of the clock, I fall
through all this into a
vacant universe, falling
in the vastness and silence,
into the stretching void - there
are no arms to catch me
and I fall into nothingness:
I do not know my name,

what I am that was created
and why my tiny eyes
and heart have carried me
so far.  There is a secret
somewhere if I could
only find the cypher, the key.
We must have been
given the tools to know it,

through the portals of our
fragile bodies, the mazes
of our minds, the boundless
depths of our hearts:

I will meditate it - I will
conjure it, I believe
it is there - I only hope
to recognise it
right in front of me
when I turn one day
into the sun coming
over the hill.

previous poem

next poem