Raisbeck

More than a little submerged, in part erased,
a theatre of some size. But what went on,
the scenes that took place on a stage in the round,
is of small consequence now. Perhaps one has
a heightened sense of the current of things,
the seconds that have led to a vivid hour
where a field is ocean-deep, as on the surface
a sheep-community stroll and laze. Mothers
eye an old tired man where he sits
on a low-lying boulder, children hop up
and quick-down from some insignificant heights,
rock-hillocks that mark out a circle of sorts,
but enshrine so little now. And so much still.
Why does the human, with his odd words,
know that the grass breathes even as he does? How
can he find himself absorbed in an immense
dramatic sequel? Is there a part for him
in a rolling tide, an unrolling script of change?
In the slight uneven space of a restless green
and dark scuffed soil the voices echo
of other humans who knew the tug of the earth,
and acted out a tribute to its ways.

He has a part. For him, a closing speech
declaims itself beneath the level of whisper
and as loud as all the voices of the ocean
of the elements of time. He thanks his family,
the older ones who went before, and made this,
and raised the artefact of the human world,
his for a time. For a breath he knows what it is
to share a space with the great labourers
of the long past. At last he has been able
to play his part, to thank and recognise
those who stood on the stage before, the cast
of the old days, who put on such a show
across the globe for him, and not least here.

It is as if, on a quiet tract of land,
in the most natural way, a cue is offered,
to operate at length, in its own time,
for him to make an exit and an entrance.