History

I was English once, and proper,

my vein’s inheritance.

I hear it in my voice, in the phrasing

I use when correcting my child.

The plumped pillows, the tidy urges, the dutiful attempts

to order the errant hours into a kind

of sense, all know I was English.

I was Celtic once, seeking the pulse

of stories, earth and water. I feel it in the stir

of blood when wind keens through the bones

of midnight trees, the sound telling of a far

light past heathered moors, strange tea brewing

in a kettle on my hearth while the elders

in the village plotted a solution.

Better to live English in these unruly days. Preferable

to take chaos to task, line it up, give calming,

reasonable answers. Pay no heed to the smell

of something starting to burn.