FOOTSTEPS

We follow in your footsteps, my son
beloved, around each tree
each tree, with precious Nile water pooling round its feet
bull-rush, fish, the ducks gone awol
skimming the ditches, slurping through the silt
and I stand witness, with my long-distance eye
on how each one, in the wild, rich sun
leaps up and upwards, in the sparkling blue
and the way the air out there, bends and swoops
playing along the longitudes, with birdsong bright.

The multitude lime-groves, forest thick, with heavy shade
make dreamy blankets, doorways to secretive worlds of fertility
where the fox hides and the guinea fowl distains to go;
their fruit luxuriant, the life’s-blood for Man’s rightful needs
to feed those mouths and shelter little ones.
When it is time for gathering, half the village folk
roll up: welcome work, to fill those sacks
- also, pick-pockets somewhat full, a bonanza
with stashes hidden in the thickets, to be collected overnight
as if we didn’t know, or couldn’t see!
You would wave your arm generously dismissive – God’s portion.

Now you walk in other orchards
and we are left plodding the dusty tracks of Earth
your darling sister sustaining, reclaiming your dream
of heaven on earth
the hard work and re-learning the hows and ways
of Eden’s first promise of fruitfulness:
how the weed and thorn invaded paradise
and even now, we wrestle with that lineage, inside and out
lest all returns to barren sticks and stones.

Your journey – how the Earth itself reclaimed you
led you, bit by bit to revive, recover your own root wisdom
patiently; to release, let go, re-find alignment
with the cycles and rhythms of nature’s store:
the abundance in austerity, in simple faith.

I see you, standing in the furnace sun of noon
over each tree, each pruning, each planting
devotee apprentice of the soil:
how it all works, after the machinery of big brains failed -
fortunes made and lost to no avail.
You sought refuge in the land itself, with its spaces, silence
from which could grow a new world
organic, self-regulating and sustaining;
children of Adam’s trusteeship inherited in the watering
in the back-break and the standing to attention
alert yet still.

The date palms burgeon, their thickening torsos
like fingers, along the path-ways, aside the ditches
sprouting tomorrows harvest, waving their lofty fronds
among the rarer trees - mango, olive, nabak, fig, guava, pomegranate
where those sentry geese patrol, honk and hiss
- the bul-bul calls and herons prop one-legged in the reeds;
they were plucked from poverty and the knife -
I remember the first day they came, freed from their bonds
how they headed instinctively, straight as a die for the water
wading and waddling joyfully
us, agape.

Many heart-breaks later, we pilgrim here
but its not a matter of recapture return.
Nature’s own mercy is its heartless bounty
Recycling endlessly, time-scorning
Pretty pictures and happy individual endings
not its way. Even the beauty lies in its callousness.
And, therein, glimpses of you among the trees
at peace, absorbed, renewed
by what those masters of detachment teach.