at destination
Do you know there are two roads?
We take them both.
We take the hard highway, scuffing the gravel
with determined stride; and with us travel
innumerable friends and strangers, loath
within the crowd to hazard separation
on the sun-drummed route towards a destination
not one of us shall ever reach.
But you and I
take also another road that the high-grassed fell
hides from the mob – a pathway plunging a dell
undergrown too deep for any raiding eye
to delve our leaf-funnelled passage.
Darling girl,
here in this tree-borne birdsong and the hollow curl
of water at our feet, we two can stray
where we will – at destination all the way.