AFTER THE MONSOON
After the monsoon
rocks are laid to rest
like cradled babies
beside each upended
road. Women and men,
adze in hand and basket
stacked, wave as our bus
lurches over red earth.
We are washed away
by their smiles.
HOW I SEE THE SEA
for Carla Grosch-Miller
I see the sea as expanse,
nudging my eye to its edge.
It is how it fits the sky
that immerses me.
You see the sea as flow,
as currents, as tides:
how it shingles hope
with its ebb of fear.
I could never be in waves.
I resist their pull from here,
above, outside, upon the prom
separate from the sea,
You would swim every day,
breasting the green swathe:
I would stand looking on.
I have no surging faith.
ANGLO SAXON ATTITUDES
Some Wuffinga cops it
and is buried with his stuff
gold, Byzantine plate,
a silver titfer, and enough
bracelets to sink a ship.
Bishops ride for days and days
on wrecked roads, to arrive
in Clovesho, which they know
as the centre of Mercia:
it has gone AWOL now.
Victory at lost Brunanburh
makes England sure to thrive.
Vikings enter Valhalla and Scots
scatter, barely alive. All hail,
Aethelstan, our main man.
We know so little of who we are,
where we come from, what
happened. The questions are left,
the answers lost and untraded,
like the one gold coin of Coenwulf.
