Written December 1978
(If you are reading this on your i-phone, turn the phone sideways for a better read. Computers have a habit of deciding how to form lines, which, to my frustration, alters the rhythm of the poem.)
Footprints
of intermittent gulls
as sharp and fine as this day’s faith in each tomorrow
Water washing my feet
swelled with heat of endless highways
Prints of robots also
walking same old spans of coastline
sanely
salting wounds of we explorers
raw as harrowed earth
with smiles worn to aggravate
our spreading sores of burning inquisition
There’s a hollow where my body lay still warm with reminiscing till night strode in and closed the show
without a minute’s warning
A set of blacksmith’s footprints
mind and soul shapes
permeates four decades’ tempered rhythm
changeless as a thumb print
till the waters of remorse wash over
spreading
widely
not erasing markings but transfiguring
the smithy’s jaded soul
His old shapes still remain
on hillsides soft with spring
and river banks as story-filled as seas
In factories where boyhood flees without the backward glances
shot in general stores
On cushioned floors awash with music
favourite chairs
and bean bags
Bare
abandoned
cold as fear
his shapes remain
In gullies sweet with berries
In bush
where boys and dogs and cousins
carrying tackle like the treasure troves of kings
take living like the English take their tea
In the west
where night skies shrink one’s being
to the size of light in God’s fine eye
I hear a hammer ringing out
a lucid song of retrospect
Verses heavy with the weight of hope
extend their burning hands
and lead a brood of mourners back
to farm-yards sleeping under March skies
yielding succour to a boy aglow with daydreams
And through a chain of diverse days
now taut
now slack
but always anchored deep in strong cognizance
coupling roots as palpable as sunlight
with a grace that wings its way
to boundlessness
and truce
To read yesterday’s blog ‘Kelpies and Rust’, scroll down a little and click on Previous