Enduring Gene
PublishedJune 30, 2011 CategoryPoems of Engagement

Enduring Gene

We come of earth, of ocean and of sky.
Drop this one stitch, some skein of time unravels.
We are the needle’s necessary eye
Through which the life-thread, past to future, travels.

Ours is the gene that cannot be ignored,
That bends the warp of Fate’s incessant spinnings;
Refreshes meaning in the tired word;
Explodes all fraud of endings and beginnings.

Of music still to come we’ve shared the making,
Earth’s restless anthem in which all are singers;
At every dawn and new-tomorrow’s waking,
We are to newer fruits the pollen-bringers.

Nothing’s to come in which we lack all sharing.
Some echo ineradicably lingers.
Each life’s particularity of daring
Informs these patterns at our childrens’ fingers.

Ralph Windle for the Macmillan Cancer Support ‘Soul Feathers’ Anthology 2011