Low and Golden / new poems 2011

Born Into This Blood

Born into this blood, roads as weary as I am
Having walked them on and on
Into the length of broadening, lowering light
Lying down across the trees, brush and bramble
Here at the edge of a thicket mind, of a rose-pricked heart,
The beyond increasingly as dark as the beginning,
With just the unseen owls there to ask the only question
That still seems to matter,

"Who?"

Goes there, has been there, carries on
In the face of a changing face,
Not only because the light is fading,
Sending shadows into the deepening lines
Of a mask at best, but because
The blood may be the only thing
Which has remained the same
Along the way.