Where Power Comes From

I always write too much to start with and am much to eager to tell my ideas and forget the poetry. Oh well, edit:












Where Power Comes From

East

It is dawn.
A single red Routemaster bus,
Is flying, unnoticed, across the blue-grey,
And the milk bottle train
Slips out of the depot,
Slinking along the sidings.

South

Cut,
Shining sword, to the sea,
Where my skin is a salty sea dog,
And over the gunwhales comes the smack
Of mackerel, the nausea of D-Day landers
And the celebration of gold.

West

Sub-sylvan,
I feel this belly-flood of green,
Think it dark to point of black.
I grasp the scales of the beast
Between the snorting wind and wilderness
And ride the swirling cloud over the edge.

North

Come here,
The now,
Fire spitting in the dark
Of hidden valley night, of winter white,
Of the meaninglessness of cycles
Of settle, depth and melt.

Earth

This land
Is all
That we have for sure,
This land, this land, this I am,
This green grass beneath my feet,
This carved and twisted stone round which I spiral,

Sky

Through the clouds
Is the blue.
Through the blue is the void.
Laid down upon the pavement I look high,
Penetrate the concrete, the gap in the city ceiling,
See through the stars and the falling

Ancestors

Once, now,
As the glacier
Withdraws and welcomes my kin
To its carving, I become alive,
I light fires, hunt bison,
Am bison, sacred, dead, and alive.

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