Pilgrims,
passage migrants,
flown-in-the-night,
dark-island birds,
the here-and-gone
shearwaters
take effortless flight
from nests of earth.
The wild runs wild
and the wild places
bear no witness.
But we are set to rest
on tamed ground,
no strangers to comfort,
safety in our numbers.
Sitting in a hospital café, waiting, I went about a bit of writing. Of course, I had taken an old notebook - by mistake. Four pages left and the rest filled with writing going back five years. As I leafed through, looking for ways to identify which spontaneous scribbles had turned into useful poems, I found a precursor that had slipped away in an early edit.
passage migrants,
flown-in-the-night,
dark-island birds,
the here-and-gone
shearwaters
take effortless flight
from nests of earth.
The wild runs wild
and the wild places
bear no witness.
But we are set to rest
on tamed ground,
no strangers to comfort,
safety in our numbers.
© BH, 2021
Sitting in a hospital café, waiting, I went about a bit of writing. Of course, I had taken an old notebook - by mistake. Four pages left and the rest filled with writing going back five years. As I leafed through, looking for ways to identify which spontaneous scribbles had turned into useful poems, I found a precursor that had slipped away in an early edit.
Here it is, reworked and illustrated with a drawing I made while working for a man I never met… Go figure…
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