We Should not Delay

Twice three days

Past the last of the

Snow-and-salt trees,

Belts of long mountains,

We may find

What we deserve

In this serious desert:

It’s Been Raining

Drum comes in; steady and

Lacota-Sioux, ghost- beat strong.

She’s standing, tall and proud

Behind silk scarfed microphone

In seen-better-days snakeskin boots;

Click!

I am one simple step

Off the path;

The heather and grass move

And, as suddenly as that – click! –

I am a little lost:

Not quite of, and in, this world,

Not quite not.

Surrounded by the ringing charms

Of constant-cuckoo choir;

And the long-travelled  voices

Of ghosts of migrant geese,

The high, wind-thinned whining

Of a fence that leans

On shifting shadow-cloud;

Marching stoically into

The resolute grey distances and futures:

The truth alone may

never be enough again.

 

30/5/2013

Related articles

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• A call for the cuckoo: how to help an endangered bird (guardian.co.uk)