Tracks Across The Hills Poem by Michael Maxwell Steer

What did I think when I knew you had gone there?
I thought of the space between us -
the radio channel once filled with chatter,
now stilled with the atmospherics of cosmic silence.

The ‘they can't take that away from me' of
‘the way you sip your tea.'
The deep unforgotten intimacy of once-sought strangers.

How the psychic opening of one human being
to another is every bit as miraculous
as the most exotic mating
recorded in glowing close-up on tv,

Beyond the urgency of the pulsing blood,
what lies in the half-light where
the imagination takes metaphysical form.

Here the similarities of birth give rise
to common trajectories of meaning
which follow ancient trackways across the downscape
of relationships that incomers cannot trace -
the tapestried meanings of banks and ditches as boundary markers and guides.

It is ultimately in the topography of ancient loyalties
that meaning lies, discernible only by those bred on the land


4/2/06