Private, intimate, sensate;
breaching that homeless ache
beyond the reach of language,
to make sculptures that seem
to float just above the ground,
narrow columns, six feet high,
clothed in succulent colours;
sentinels in communion,
sensate spirits always reaching
upward, into the light, letting go
the personal to know the divine.
Age eleven Anne longs to escape
from the private gloom of home;
is given a red and white bicycle,
explores her home town, mapping
Easton’s grid pattern, cycling north,
south, east and west, memorising
its layout, until she knows every
alley, finds in a neglected yard,
a strange being, a mirror ball
reflecting the town, the trees,
her own face turned comical.
She grows too tall for the bicycle,
moves away, a war passes, she marries,
has three children, loses him to alcohol,
in time responds to the intimate tug
of the eastern shore of Maryland;
sifts through the sandbox of memory,
breakers spilling the ocean at her feet,
gathers her family to the feast, abides
with all those footsteps, printed along
the shoreline, generations trailing off
toward the horizon’s gentle erasure.
