UP THE GARDEN PATH

Lead me up the garden path, my soul!
Down the lanes and byways
Where things pop out
and unplanned vistas, faces, notions
arise like wild-flowers
seeding, sprouting
flooding the hungry heart
with fecund hope:
the Living Ground complicit.

It’s not just up to you and me
to devise, control and direct
each brand-new moment
- and then sustain, hang on to
and depend on,
as if it’s prime property
an investment against the unreliable vicissitudes
of being part of and made from a system
that actually revels in Uncertainty
using secrecy and surprise
as tools for its evolving agenda.
Time, it’s stretchy game.

Nor is it just a godly “given”:
trapped in a limited company policy
following the rules;
Survival-ridden.

No benefit from free-ranging pirates
Right to roam idealogues,
romantic myopics.
Earth needs pragmatists
live and let live-ers, in-the-moment-ists
with big hands, clear minds
in trusteeship
with the intelligences of Earth
It’s life-forms, energies, kingdoms
It’s interactive and interdependent worlds.
Besides freedom and accountability
it requires creative intelligence
visionary for-sight and insight,
Sense and sensitivity.

It is a creaturely kindred Being.
Hospitable home
for its fruit and flowers
It’s diverse children
- rich in elemental provision
and ingenious beauties.
Every path and nook, glen or track
Inspiration, succour and refuge
for the starving spirit of Man:
self-disinherited squatters
in Paradise lost.