Meetings

I would be happy as a minor poet.
The ballads of my ancestors come to me in dreams.
Duty to them a girdle, or a burrowing root;
Mine only to write them down.

Only to listen for the change in air pressure
That signifies the coming of images.
Here, now, is a bridle, and heather.
Water over limestone, and the wind
That comes over the tops, determined.

Here, now, the sea,
Wrapping calmly around dark harbours,
And a man and woman on a headland,
Their fingers linked unseen beneath wool and cotton.

This cannot be, but it is.
This will link us until we die,
And then it will link others.
The water could take us now,
But we would not be free of this.

We will never be free of this.