Edward Storey
Half-way from the Apple Tree
Even discounting the fable of Adam and Eve
We are still exiles from where we might have been,
Knowing there’s always an horizon beyond
The horizon, whichever way we’re looking.
And what we think is an end is only half of the journey.
Smells in the air from another country
Are not sucked dry by the sea over which
They have travelled. They are as familiar
As wood-smoke from a garden fire,
Or the scent of flowers we once admired secretly.
They are more than sounds trapped in a sea-shell
For a child’s ear. Smells are fixed in the brain
Like dreams that will not let us go.
We are back at the sea’s edge where birds
Have a human voice, where the wind sings.
If we turn to the hills there is the call
Of someone whose accent we know,
As if to prove we once spoke their language.
But, backwards or forwards, we are as far
From land-fall as our shore of departure.
Poised in middle distance we make
Each temporary place a paradise
If only to convince ourselves that we
Fared better than the ones who failed
To get half-way before their apple fell.
Page(s) 12
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