Writing on the Wall

Character;   house in the picture.

You think you know me, staring from your passing car.
You want to know me, for an instant you maybe do.
You don’t of course, you can’t, not really.
But something in my remoteness and rising smoke
casts magic finger spells that curl 
a streaming S upon the sky.

My smoky wood-breath gathers on wind,
blows through your open window as you drive.
Drawn in your lungs,
the scent of cedar in your cells locks memories of form;
mortar wedging rock on granary steps,
moss and lichen leached on lime wash,
all taken in a second as you pass.

Then from childhood you recall me,
the archetypal image in kindergarten sketches,
the home you never had,
a hearth that did not heat
or empty you of ice that would not melt.

I am the longed for nest of walls,
that echo bleating sheep, deflect howling gales.
I’m sun-sucked warm and call to you come in.

I could hold you, warm you,
take a world of weather off your back.
I signal through my hazy drift.
I do not shout but stand a solid presence,
waving, in an empty land. 

Beverley Fry.
4th Oct 2008