still

on a flat rock made just for his bones,

breathes his belly out

and waits until he can hear the upseeping sap

in the legs of the forest.

'Make a eucharist for my children,' says the flat rock.

Sadhu jumps down like a boy,

breaks a loaf and scatters it.

'Both loaves.'

Sadhu smiles, breaks his last loaf.

I have no wine, he thinks.

'You are not looking,' says the flat rock.

He gathers blackberries,

squeezes them into a small smooth hollow.

Sadhu sits,

the afternoon eternal.

Sparrows, mice, ants come

pecking, nibbling, carrying away the crumbs,

wasps hover over the stickening juice.

As the sun's tap closes and the light pools,

deer loom not far off,

mosquitoes gather round their warmth,

bats and foxes stretch.

Dusk pangs move Sadhu on, and in his way

are pignuts, wild garlic, and the bitter leaves of elm

who also listened for the flat rock's voice.

building roads where no cities are

and praying for traffic and pastry sales,

accelerating the tow of stupid seeds in hot exhausts.

But the soul still travels overland,

over sand,

at the speed of a camel,

and when you're older

and the glassy-eyed twitching has stopped,

you'll regret the cutting of the baobab tree

that needed you

even less than you needed me.

around the tremulous half-buried flat fins,

elegant eddies of waste, waltzing.

No-one can see me down here

quilted by fine sand, camouflaged.

Think I might stay.

Haven't been a fish before, soft warm stomach-sleeping.

Now a filament of sand glides by

down and left,

in and out between green fronds

abrading, nibbling at flakes of skin

between yellowing toes.

Toes?

Watery dawn rays play on feet cold

from uncovering,

tingled by the sunlight

and sending a slow signal up the long drowsy tracks

towards the capital,

where feet have heeled shoes.

Does my foot know it's Monday?

I was happy as a fish.

and heats to vapour the swollen millrace of dreams

that call the priest

awake and up and into dazed attention,

and thankfulness arises in his heart

for light and warmth

and all the teeming stuff of earthy life

that comes with just a little tilling

and ancestral knowing of the place,

the woodpecker his alarm,

the timid deer his wife,

then he knows no better way to start

than touching forehead to the ground

and painting blessing

in every chamber of his heart

so that it leaks a bit with every beat

and blesses every tiny space

just like the worms beneath his feet.

Always tightly held, never growing up.

And now I've let him off the leash

to race around madly,

flattened ears,

noisy, troublesome, lost,

barking at stupid drivers, stupid shoppers,

litter louts, bad pavement manners,

the ten o'clock news, advertising banners.

When he's older he'll bark less,

maybe just bare his teeth and grumble, 

recognizing friends and boundaries,

not so spooked by hedgerow rustles,

better schooled by rough and tumble.

But just now he needs to run

and run

and as he runs he grows,

throws himself into soft-muscled twitching sleep

where he leaps with butterflies, bees and bitches,

chasing and biting 

whatever touches eye or nose.

to listen to my father's advice.

He was out, at work I guessed.

Perhaps he meant that for the best,

but he had left a note

taped to the hull of his boat.

Our boat.

Meditate like an oyster, it read.

No armchair, no straightened spine,

no emptying, no depth of breath, no Zen.

Arch your back, hunker down,

small and sealed against it all

except the tear that rises from your deep shinbone's marrow,

and the friendly grain of sand,

Then rock and rock with the belly-hammering tide.

Sleep there until your raspberry eyes begin to soften.

For all things are possible

but some things are written:

snot, pearls,

other worlds.

Then I may feed the earth that nourished me.

Sow lilies round my feet

So as their journey ends they may once more smell sweet.

Beside my hands grow maize

Feed children on the labour of my days.

Upon my head put sage

The mark of wisdom's dawning in old age.

Plant on my heart the burning bush of old

Consuming fire consumed, and turned to gold.

Bury me under a tree

The life I owe I now give back to thee.

Uncovering the clumsy hooligan's detritus.

He's been blundering around again

with his big drunken feet trampling the flowers,

his empty cans mourning and clanking.

I fill in the kicked divots

dragging aside the lame shopping trolleys

the dumb fridges,

raking, sweeping, making straight.

Till the heart's eye conjures the garden again

and at the centre a laid table, lit with golden edges

in the presence of the mundane.

Here I can sit

and point my silver-pointed mind down

into deeper reaches

where there's no grip, no morning,

the sign seen only by those who wait.

Sat and listened to the slow, fat ooze

Till the detail filtered through that he could use.

Not name, not face, not colour,

Nor Hebrew race,

Just size and weight, and time and landing place.

Then, checking left and right, he realised his task, what he would need

To find, inspect, to cut and clean the reed,

Measure, trim, weave and seal,

His fast hand fashioning a smaller, faster craft

To take today's child out to where the flow has its fastest feel,

Swooping past the regal shore,

Where gentle ladies bathe on a gentle slope,

Avoiding Pharaoh's haughty, painted wife

Who, even so,

Knew more of life

Than her husband's or some doctor's knife,

Round to the rougher, steeper, working waters

Where raw-handed women beat the family clothes,

And childless mothers keep a sharp watch for woven boats, and hope.

I am the dusty traveller,

the journey, the road,

the pothole and the hoof.

I am Balaam and the voice I hear

is my breathing creature

plodding on,

eating straw,

seeing angels.