FOR RAVI

Grass bends to the weight
Of a foot.
Even mine, aged eight
In a brown lace-up shoe
By Stride Rite.

Repeated ten times a week
Along the same meadow route
The grass will die
But in its place a path
Will be born. 

My first path:
A very literally constructed
Short cut between house 
And school in a small
English village.

It is tempting to write
(Under the sway of poesy)
That I have been making purposeful
Paths ever since. I wish:
Only like a mad woman’s knitting.

Random, tangential
And often without purpose
Metaphorical, not Literal Paths.
Wayward ways through Life
In Space and Time. 

Towards the end
There is the inevitable
Tangle, which at first one
Attempts to organize
Into some coherence.

Sometimes, a friend 
Will suggest throwing out
The unruly mess - one’s
Constructed Self - and perhaps
There is a discovery.

Under that tangled skein
There remains a vestige of
One’s Birthright:
The Soul that rises with us
Our Life’s Star. 

William Wordsworth