Читать книгу Letters to the Earth - Группа авторов - Страница 15

You gave me milk when I arrived, sweet and warm. And slowly colours came; they had no names, not then, and the sounds no source. I had no hands, no feet. I was just breath slowly folding into skin and there was no soil, no rain, not a leaf or a shell.

At four years old you gave me fields and stars waiting; they are still waiting. Then streams and banks thick with grass began to appear, a path lined with daffodils, wet sand and gulls calling from within the light coming off the sea baptising everything. You hid so many jewels: blue eggs in lined nests, sparkling feathers, pink and yellow shells, small silver fishes. And at night silent and moving closer now, wolves and pulling waters.

You didn’t show me the dawn and the dusk until I was able to be still, until I was able to open these doors by myself. To know them as beginnings and endings. We were always part of each other. I am salts and water as is every leaf, every lion, every hill. And I am every river, every flower, every wave, every stone and they are me, the hunted and the hunter.

Now I can see you shining, glistening, moving through space, around the star holding your precious cargo of whales, goldcrests, petals. Yes, your cargo of dreams, of love distilling every bitter seed. Brushed with clouds.

It is my hope that love will prevail – that we will prevail through loving, through knowing every seed and star is love. That in time I will hold you as you hold me. That we will know the end of isolation and the beckoning of the reality of interdependence. That this is balance which is wisdom, look at the route the river takes. The branches leaning into the light.

I give you thanks. For the dew, for the sound of leaves, for the way water moves light, for birdsong, for the deserts, for hunger. For the cup of desire.

I have yet to learn that looking after myself begins with loving you, that we are husband and wife, that I sleep in your arms and drink your milk.

And now growing older you show me the symmetry of leaves, how death takes hold and how deep your scent is sweet in spring.

Peter Owen Jones