UPLANDS 3.
(Wellsprings of the sea)
It all begins from here.
Next to nothing.
With thoughts unrooted, heady.
Pulled out and upward to limitless blue distances.
It begins moving on the edge of the sedge-grasses;
On the uncertain, treacherous ground;
On the coolness of the wind that carries the spice of death
Deeply within its folds.
It begins on the copper whale-backs of time,
Arcing out of the valley floors,
Carrying scorched stars and the ink of jet certainty
Into the unknown orbit of delivered time.
It begins with a line of trajectory,
An abandoning of nicety,
An allowance of ululating song
And purposeless joy.
It begins with bones, begins with nakedness,
Begins with scattered remnants and piled stones.
It begins with remembering and forgetting,
And a pure tenacity to continue on.
It begins with a circulation of tears,
A saturated weight desiring heft.
Waters moving together, ribbons rippling out of sight.
Peat, brown as beer, iron-rich, blood of earth.
It begins before sound begins,
before the names arrive.
And then the names carry it into our own belonging,
Mapped out and pinned down steady.
Here and here and here,
we dwelt, we smiled, we died.
Always there, hinting blue, lost beyond reach.
Always yearned after, hazily recalled.
Always one step further, one crest away.
Always more real than the real,
Freer than freedom, a weightless soul flight.
There, with the buzzards, with the kites.
There with the patient grumbling stone,
With the stumbling cloud, the hissing mist.
A dream, really, of how it was, of how it will be.
The uplands of heaven, void and singing.
(40)
—
simonhlilly 