Foundations
When houses are new,
with inspiring, influential solidity,
with smoky signs of life soaring to heights
and lights, the life-signs of the restless.
New houses are square, they're just there,
like single boulders. Built on shared
times, mortared with blunt-edged anecdotes,
fresh colours, clean windows, new glue.
When houses are old,
and fulfilling their use, cracks start to show.
Its walls wane and wander,
groaning under the weight of age and change.
The gaps trace like deconstructing plot-lines,
through predictable brick-line breaks,
like old arguments with new jagged edges,
down to the foundations, without fuss, like foundations.
And there, nestling on the bedrock, is our base
of unshifting seismic certainty,
of unchanging geological you-ness,
of all you are, without fuss, like rock.
Underground, unseen, understood,
unfounded, the earth swallows us.
Better by far we are founded
than rocked by a bitter wind,
or dislodged by a weed,
growing in our shadow.
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