For the Shade of a Poet Abandoned

“I am – ”
  –John Clare

In cities what’s not me I think is.
Eyes reveal nothing inside is true.
With two hands I reach to grasp and fail.

In the country, animals know more.
Roads go unpaved, no paths visible.
I shun their company and they mine.

I loathe suburbs, their off-ramps, dead ends.
God is He who lets me go outside.
I need to hear rivers, oceans, wind.

What I can’t see I need to be there.
The trees. The sky. Deep under the earth.
Soughing, thundering, rumbling, I am.

And who are they out there who walk by?
I beckon through the bars and they flee.
Each day I am freed to leave my cage.

There is work. It does not pay money.
I know the strain, the load I shoulder.
Weary, I sleep, I rise with the dawn.

Little creatures frolic in the snow.
I shovel paths for children to walk.
Mothers and fathers follow them home.

Between ice and the warm earth I live.
I love ecstasy, no in-between.
Where the heart needs to go, breath moves me.

(28 February 2013)

copyright 2013 by Floyce Alexander