Hold everything dear

[lahockman]

Hold Everything Dearfor John Bergeras the brick of the afternoon stores the rose heat of the journeyas the rose buds a green room to breatheand blossoms like the windas the thinning birches whisper their silver stories of the wind to the urgent in the trucksas the leaves of the hedge store the lightthat the moment thought it had lostas the nest of her wrist beats like the chest of a wren in the turning airas the chorus of the earth find their eyes in the skyand unwrap them in each other in the teeming darkhold everything dearthe calligraphy of birds across the morningthe million hands of the axe, the soft hand of the earthone step ahead of timethe broken teeth of tribes and their long placesteppe-scattered and togetherclay’s small, surviving handle, the near ghost of a jugcarrying itself towards us through the soilthe pledge of offered arms, the single sheet that is our common walkingthe map of the palm heldin a knotbut given as a torchhold everything dearthe paths they make towards us and how far we open towards themthe justice of a grass that unravels palaces but shelters the songs of the searchingthe vessel that names the waves, the jug of this life, as it fills with the days as it sinks to become what it lovesmemory that grows into a shape the tree always knew as a seedthe wordsthe breadthe child who reaches for the truths beyond the doorthe yearning to begin again togetheranimals keen inside the parliament of the worldthe people in the room the people in the street the peoplehold everything dear19th May 2005Gareth Evans