What country
     did I travel from
when I was born?

What alluring bait
     made me leave?

William Blake
     as he was dying
craned forward
     towards a country
he’d always wanted to see.

His rapturous curiosity
     always
         an unsettling inspiration.

The Venerable Bede
         embroidered his metaphor
             of the brevity of life
after watching
         a sparrow fly
             from one darkness to another
                 a living flash
through a torch-bright hall.

What lives
       keep leaping
            to and fro
those pregnant black tunnels
            of being?

On a bold day
       my own footloose
            soul
can smell a good
            sailing wind –
the dare
           in Blake’s shimmying-up-the-mask
last breath –
and then crawl
    snug and wide-eyed
        into the downy
        undercarriage
of Bede’s plucky
         traveller bird.