Normandy Cliff

A drum beat sounds on the
Stout heart of a Cliffside
My hands draw from
The earth, ancient spirits
Married into the soil

Some more ancient than others
Heavy-laden souls
Heavy-laden bodies
Heavy-laden with life
That faded in the channel

En masse, ships
Moving Mountains
Like glaciers, wiped life
From the sea
From the beaches

But that chaos
That anarchy that died long
Ago, and now the Bones
Of Saxons lie with the Bones
Of Celts, anonymous

And I, a sapling green
Let my mind meander, discover
When my fingers dig
Like roots into the ground
Its memories are mine

Mine belong to it
And I see that God
Lives here, this wound in humanity
In this Normandy cliff on whose earth
I cry, for its wordless beauty

For the cries that haunt
The wind, for the tears that
Haunt the sea
For all the death and life
That now blooms in my soul