Unlearned

I am
sorry for our kind, now, today - 
with our restlessness our 
dizzy heads our 
wayward way - beguiled 
and tantalised by dreams of 
money and big houses, lavish 
gifts and impressions, making 
others wide-eyed.   Gone

is the concentrated movement of 
co-ordinated hand and eye - the 
important boring of a steady hole in 
flint or stone, for, by that 
we live or die.   No more the 
stolidness of stone, time-hardy 
with no wearing down, reliable 
and safe as houses from 
the elements that kill.

Gone the drinking time
of skin and eyes to feel
the glitter on the water, high cloud
rising, patience to sit and
wait for the stone that keeps us
to speak, and the quiet

pride of body-labour as our 
fruits grow and a field of 
corn waves in the sun - time 
for ripening bellies, the

stitching of skin, the 
hand-grasp and warm, eyes 
gleaming in the fitful fire - 
silence as the wind bellows 
at the stone and fingers 
hollows in the wall.

I am sorry for our kind - 
our rushing days our 
shallownesses - like children 
we reach for a flicking 
screen and push plastic 
buttons in the corner that 
have us mesmerised 
and want to be 
what we are not 
eternally thirsty for things 
that cannot feed.   We endanger

ourselves with 
our hollow need.

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