Roaring above the water-wended hills
Of my foreign found home
Limping down slope dodgy knee
Another year of life gifted to me.
Soaring heart like Icarus
I follow it flying far
To bask in melting, unto it’s deathfall
Daedalus watching weeping gliding on
To the cold wet landscape I was born too
So long rejected
Find a quality there unlooked for
That sings a rich current
Drawing me in to history and heritage
To pride and grief
The teeming tribes swirl organic and free
Cut down under rigid tramping hobnails
Cut into squares and baked
With Mediterranean savagery
All this I see
Meditating under an old yew tree.
I climb and climb until my hands break
Trying to escape
I work and work a job for every finger
Until I’m decimated
Numb to the pain
When work stops there are other poisons
With which to dose myself
Until like Mithradates
I cannot end it, but must go on and on running.
It’s such an effort of will to jerk the halter
On this horse that’s under
To tussle it into submission
So let it run
And see to what port I sail by getting there
Many dreams drown in that vast sea of grass
Wider than an ocean, more lonely
I am surrounded by lush green joy
Birdsong and sunshine
But it does not reach into me like it did
To draw a smile from my heart
Pull ululation from my lungs
My tears dammed like the waters of life
Under concrete and tarmac
And other people’s love.
Joe Blogs, Dec 2023