Lost Language

I miss home - where I don’t have to justify, or compromise -
Where my brogue runs proudly with the pack.
Where time lapsed is what I think they call
‘The time that was, the time that is’.
The elongated shadows slice, through concrete
Reminiscences, I’ve long since buried deep,
That now and then invade, and thrust out
From distance, held at bay, yet running through
My mind, a time when I considered me, not you
Not them but little me. Then I flash back to wildest Ash
Its massive state, o’er hanging walls and tidy stream,
The icy gurgling flow that slops in shadows flickering,
Like the mind suppressed, to make today work better still,
To keep my track as forward bound as it can be.
The distant song, the voices call, the ragged
Guttural chant of language lost, within these walls,
Not overhung with branch and tree, but stone
That separates you from me - like walls amid
Mute neighbours - overlapping, crowding, inside me
like I never knew how hard t’would be to be both me
and distant tree, though rooted, mute to left and right,
And rooted deep beneath the land. Resting forever in this earth,
So blind and almost dumb at times.
Speak up! And tremble if needs be, become the branch
Upon the tree, despite the seasons deep in me,
The sap that rises, ‘Yes, I will be once more myself,
The real me’. I’ve missed my home and all of them,
Nostalgia brings a bleary view of how things
Were and hoped to be. Yet who like me have
Built their homes, once, and yet once more again,
Upon some shifting fleeting land?
Yes echoes haunt me, trembling deep, some
Distant time and bathed in sleep,
I dream of my great towering Ash,
My tentative feet, soft treading heather,
As my brogue runs proudly with the pack,
I gently sigh ‘go back… go back…..’