laying foundations [edited]
We are caught in that open space between
talking and not talking
wood at our backs, beneath our feet
alone in a house built out of a mountain
bannisters like branches
and I think to have grown up here, organic,
jonquils at the window beneath the pines
spaces and closeness
folded into the walls around you
has built both character and contradiction. Here
I am not so much out of my depth as
above the usual sea in which I swim
with quicksilver blindness
and I am sure now this is the distance
that shapes you, with your uncertain foundations
and unshakeable confidences
for the mountains move slow
changing continents
while the air up here is finer
and rarer still for that.
