Karst Man

 

When I tell you, the man who lives on those hills is made

of the same karst he stands on,

that butts through the thin cover of his fields;

that he and his forefathers, back to neolithic times, 

used to construct the walls, their net on the landscape; 

it’s not a poetic conceit.

I have seen him standing in spring-limpid sunlight,

his legs and arms a trellis for briar and blackthorn;

a perch for robin, chaffinch and stonechat;

I tell you, it was the place that coded his DNA; 

to the spring water of his eyes, gently sloping fields of his voice,

subterranean streams of  his belonging.