© roy ballard 2012
Triple spiral

By River Boyne they laid a tomb of rocks,
rocks great and small, all overlain with earth,
with one straight passage leading to its heart
where strikes the weakest sunlight of the year.
Rays of the solstice sun and only they
can fall upon the symbol waiting there:
an endless triple-spiral cut in stone.
Carved by a hand remote in time and tongue,
its years are thousands yet we read it still
and in its clarity it seems to speak
of trinity and endless union.
Writer in stone, we mayflies of the stream
salute you.


Street View

Like a lover, lost, forlorn,
I google up Street View
to find the place where I was born
which might be made anew
or still have those same, happy paths
my childish knowing knew.

Memory retains the best:
the woody hill, the stream,
things for a tiny time possessed
that now seem like a dream
and brief as motes that flash and go
upon a random beam.

A childish day is like a year;
my years are like a day.
What’s gone before is all too clear
for time tears veils away
and ancient have become the things
that I hold dear today.