Legs, Breath

It was on the road to Athens that Apollodoros
told his friend about the party, repeated in some detail
what each guest had said that evening on the subject of love –
and on the road again, to Emmaus, where a stranger
a few centuries later used the scriptures to interpret
the same unfathomable topic, made man.
It was that walking pace, familiar from our first steps
on our own, which gave the words (sun on instep)
time to make their way (breath on breath)
through dust and dry grass into meaning.
 
Now I sit in the train, which for its own reasons
has stopped opposite a lane curving off up a hillside,
and feel how feet carry their own physical memory
of heat and pine. There’s that tug at the heart –
as if all that’s true lies just around the bend.
Once I got out of a bus just to stretch my legs – and then
reached back for my rucksack and started walking.
 

Margaret Wilmot

published in Poetry Salzburg Review, ⌗41, Summer 2024