GOING HOME
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, unremembered gate (from T.S.Eliot’s ‘Little Gidding’)
the creeping dusk of lightlag unbuttons me —the mapping
light of stars uncontrollable biases of
the spinning compass oh the
indeterminate omens of comet tails
astounds
those untrustworthy angels
their hidden agendas
my arms rampant with weight of tattooeddesire
en-tangled on weedy tracks snaresnap
tripwires here is longing for
the darkening of hot lassoing by
lusts assaults
the hidden potholes of
highway lovers
when I was young when Jesus walked on water
before the bleeding sacred
the singe the guiltflame
of thorns sweating glorified
faces of saints ascending higher
up in mountains of anonymous
archipelagos your visions seatrapped
I sing the nowcredo of stuttering
urgency butcherbird notes serenade
on highwire mourning Moonah blueblack
oh the psalms that stir underwater
patience those clerical cormorants
diving silent
at climate funerals til mourners depart
recalling too late songs of compassion still
hypnotised by the watersteady eyes of swans
the ecstasy eddies of
fairywrenhope the sky shaping
into absent pelicans rising
the rough scruples of currajongs
all these auguries of innocence and the sea
my visions are smoke drifting remembering
but is memory enough to
lift the cowl to break the caul
of separate
the roads we took so cavalier
without a backward glance were
circular, leading us back to
arrive where we started
compelled to knock again at the
forgotten familiar door, repentant for prodigaled
kisses the sweet lifting up
the mag-piedpiper chant of Matins
the tide pulling towards
the shores of home
ah the welcoming
