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Harry Owen

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Ancestor

If size counted, he was permanent,
his chest an acreage of barley, shoulders broad as hillsides.

Herdsman of wild cattle, he knew the heath,
its sphagnum musts, its pools, its sandy outposts,
knew the air’s skirl of insect wings,
the roughnesses of twigs that are questions.

If permanence counted, he was big,
his feet rooted in centuries, his girth that of oaks.

Maker of stone tools, he drained the land,
built roads straight as perspective across the shire,
haunted the tunnels of trees
and knew the earth, cool as a lover’s cheek.

If ignorance counts, we are permanent,
our legacy a silver scab of concrete, a howl of boy racers.

But this solitude gate, where no-one is alone,
is where a tiny spider still climbs the singing air
above a wiry whisper of bracken fronds.
Tomorrow, like today, is permanent.

Page(s) 39

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