This Joy of Landscape

This joy of landscape -
the gilt-edged grasses
on the early morning common -
is quick to pass
but lingers on like a well-hung canvas

One collects such images
and stores them lovingly
in a profuse architecture of chambers
tier upon tier
until one day you simply lock the door
and walk away
leaving perhaps a little catalogue
of bland entries
for those that stay next door

This is mine
That is yours
together we sing a grand oratorio
a muted requiem

Dance together to the same music
and our finger tips will not match precisely.
To the casual observer, however,
we remain one.

So our apparent little solitudes -
such painfully lonely lives -
melt away while walking
into the mystery seas

of early morning grass

Beneath the Outstretched Foot

"Beneath the outstretched foot,
no landscape but the unbroken dust.
To journey through that forbidding Sinai
Requires your unspoken consent."

For forty years we waited on the side of the wharf
and waited for the ferry to the Promised Land.
The ferry did not come, so we danced
with our backs to the sea.

Towards sunrise, a crowd appeared,
caught between sleeping and waking,
suspended momentarily
in their multitudes of occupation.
All labour forgotten,
they swayed in unison.

Two men let slip their improvised weapons,
opened their parched throats,
and began to sing. More voices
caught the flurry and rose to tumult.

And vast hosts and legions
of celestial spectators
rose to applaud the final goal:
"Halalaa!" they roared
as the sky burst open to reveal
the deepest
turquoise
blue