A Wealth Of Sky Poem by Gordon R Menzies

In the sage days of fleet July kindnesses, the
free people gather in their small ragged tribes
in the borderlands beyond street and sidewalk
amid the unshorn green of an opaline riverbank
where the last wild animals still lurk and watch
where they make narrow pathways in the earth
and the pathways are their own, and transient
and lead to gathering places beyond the city
their belongings are few, and carried, because
they know the true value of what cannot be
there, the sweet smoke of secret leaves rising
the tang of stolen sausages over driftwood fire
unburdened sleep beneath a wealth of skies
without anticipation of promised tomorrows
their women, lost, swim topless, make love
in the waterside grass and stained tents
fingers and toes aglitter with chipped paint
they scribe their stories in ink on flesh
but none can read their many languages
their schools offered different lessons

We cannot see them, and they refuse to see us
unlike them, we are bound to asphalt and concrete
our pathways are predetermined and understood
and we dare not touch the grass with our feet, so
the wild places are lost and invisible to us, and we
cannot hear the birdsong above the eternal traffic
but for the clanking of our own chains