An Evening Poem

WAKING

Get up from your bed,
go out from your house,
follow the path you know so well,
so well that you see nothing
and hear nothing
unless something can cry loudly to you,
and for you it seems
even then
no cry is louder than yours
and in your own darkness
cries have gone unheard
as long as you can remember.

These are hard paths we tread
but they are green
and lined with leaf mould
and we learn to love their contours
as we learn to love the body branching
with its veins and tunnels of dark earth.

I know that sometimes
your body is like a stone
on a path that storms break over,
embedded deeply
into that something that you think is you,
and you will not move
with the voice all around
tears the air
and fills the sky with jagged light.

But sometimes unawares
those sounds seem to descend
as if kneeling down into you
and you listen strangely caught
as the voice moving closer
halts,
and in the terrible silence
now arriving
whispers
without pity or persuasion.

Get up, I depend
on you utterly.
Everything you need
you had
the moment before
you were born.

Anon.