UPLANDS (4)
(Where it begins)
It is the mind (is it not?), that weaves the stuttered fragments
Of our own experiencing?
That makes a seamless landscape of sense, a fabricated clarity.
A story with fitting beginning, middle, end.
Hammocked between void and void we taste our own landscapes
In sweet and bitter.
Just so, we see the vast uplands there, rising smooth and even, up to heaven,
And do not feel the weight of mind, do not strain against the uneven road,
Do not catch breath at the long slopes, the impossible tussocked miles,
The scouring winds, the hungry rains.
We hold the truth of dream against the storm of tangled life.
The stories of the heroes, the builders, the survivors.
The steady, solid ones. Not the wrecked bodies, not the broken fingers,
Not the minds locked fast in relentless, ruthless faith.
Not the worn down, gap-toothed, corrugated, rusted.
Not the sightless windows. Not the tumbled walls.
Not the lichen-eaten names on tilted stone,
In ground once holy, now deserted.
Unhomed, we long for the home over there, in that heavenly blue gradient
Where peace must surely lie, a rippling shroud of psalm and skylark.
It sinks down. It all sinks down.
Covered, transformed in secret, wrapped in lightless pools,
Sucked dry by jealous peat.
This is where it begins, where life becomes holy, unnamed,
Ready to flow down into the valleys, green and sheep-scattered.
This is where the mulch is ground into futures,
And futures return to the past, and small things take control
Once and for all.
A gravel rain hits the windows in the valley.
The fire roars, fed with a world’s hungry breath.
We long, still, to be there: in the uplands of clear certainty.
Drained of doubt, stripped clean by simple necessity to go on,
Caressed by the wild that tests our bones:
The truth and freedom of powerlessness.
Doubtful moments gathered, sewn into a fine cloth.
Cloth wrapped around the meaningless distance.
A rainbow view, a bridge between body and void,
Longing, still, always, for both.
These uplands: hard to encompass,
The heart of things. Emptiness sublime.
simonhlilly 