Doggerlanders
You were the between-people
before there was anything to be between,
broth of hunters and textures,
fragments of migratory deer,
eyes on a dark sea, sniffing air,
rooting, scuttling, scuffling.
We look down on you
through Time’s backward telescope
and a hundred feet of sea,
domesticating your memory,
overlaying you with race,
displacing you with purity.
Ab Origine
Let’s call them a family
and imagine them close up,
give them faces and dreams,
assume they laughed, argued,
slit fish, held as we do
wood smoke in their hair.
Let’s follow their eyes
across the marsh, towards
a low, dark line of trees
and wonder with them
what the great red and silver
discs above will bring.
As they walk along the seabed,
carrying their ancestors,
let’s say they lack, like us,
understanding beyond their horizon,
compassion beyond their reach,
language beyond their need.
In Aeternum
The dinghy is halfway
between the seafloor
and the sky.
~
The refugees are caught
between going
and arriving.
~
Eternity is on an axis –
it can be vertical
or horizontal:
~
Gas giants and death
above, death and
mud below…
~
Prevented from arriving,
still compelled
to go.
Wood Bee Poet 