I was never born. I was always here.
Bewitched by painted symbols in the air,
by the sound of the wind shaped by the hollow of the cave
Brimful of the ebb and flow, a coursing wave
I have been a thread in the clothing of a newborn child.
I have been the root from which the tongue grows wild.
As Birnam Wood marches on Dunsinane,
So do the mountains of my childhood unchain.
Rubble and dust, desert and dump, chainsawed the olive, burned the vine,
But wait, watch water scour rock, listen to the clock tick, the land mine
Behind jet roar, rattle of helicopter blade, whizz and boom of missile and drone
Lies the land, living canvas on which dreams flicker and hone
Flesh. Relative. Home. Pause. Silence. Gone.
Then the slow opening of eyes and the sounds of a long forgotten song.
Alder and willow, rowan bursting out of the scoured bog
Spills its berries by the holly’s, dark as bloodstains on the green ground.
Acorns unfurling into two leaved oaks, nursed by the scramble,
