Poem 19

The long march of crossing someone’s heart … at first following where others have been, your ambition to get further than anyone, but it’s only once that’s done that the true scale of the endeavour opens up … in distance and in time … 

… are the thousand miles ahead or behind … it doesn’t matter …

( this is a simple and beautiful thing … I like path, unhurt and dark as the rhymes for heart … )

Traverse

I walk into you
coast rising to hills
                                  the fading path

             how long to cross your heart?


until no one is before me
                                              around me
you're whole hidden unhurt

              how long to cross your heart?


how long
I no longer ask
at the top of the mountain a thousand miles
stretch out and die into dark


             still I trudge on
             to cross your heart