Poem

In my last post, I shared a photograph I took in the summer and threw out a fishing line - the question being, if this was an illustration in a poetry anthology what sort of poem would it be married with? "Mountain Thyme" (pictured right) left me this comment:- "I see a long poem in which one learns that being true to oneself, never compromising your beliefs, "running against the wind," so to speak is not all bad. One might be lonely at times, but one will grow strong and healthy and beautiful with roots firmly planted in the ground."

She was lighting the blue touchpaper of my poetry and this is what has, rather mysteriously, emerged:-

__________________

Rooted

No man is an island

But I have been an island

Salt waves crashing on my shore

Knuckles rapping at my door.

I counted the bells of midnight

With pauses between each one

And fought with hope and memory

Before the dark was gone.

And in dawn's seeping light,

I turned to face my wall

Sure that when we leave this life

There's nothing there at all.

Earth turned

Clouds of starlings on the wing

Like shoals of tiny fish beside a reef

I heard a distant blackbird sing

And sensed the molten core beneath

It churned

Like hope, like memory.

To run with the wind

To be gone with it

So many flew like kites

Their lines lost

Up and down on

Invisible air

You see such beings

Everywhere.

I anchored myself to the earth

Held on tight for all I was worth

Felt the ebb and watched the flow

For isn't this how life must go?

I looked in the mirror

And saw my face

Entrant in the human race.