“meeting place”
I met with the morning, and then
it was stranger to me: the trees
shattered on the ground, the branches
like the beauty of human limbs as tender
as the finger that once touched
and shaped them, broken by the roar
of many rages, the leaves still bleeding
water as sweet as the air tasted
by the tongue, and still green
from this resonant spring: all night
I’d cowered in the dark, afraid,
lying in terror at conflict’s
brutal music sounding
from these far hills as if
it were my civil war, my fire,
my anger, being played out
in these battlefield woods
and fields. On the air
a spirit cry, a faint flicker: I met
a young man, fighter, little more
than the age of my child, lying
in the wrecked grass, his gauze breath
fragile, almost fading, passing
like the soft breeze
that troubled the threads
of my hair. At that moment,
there was no one else to do this,
so it was I who was the reluctant,
terrified healer, who carried him,
carried him, stranger, home.
©Euan Tait 2016.
