Lothlorien

Returning to my father’s house:
The fourteen gum beams overhead
And birch to branch and dart and dowse
For sweeter springs in my woodshed.
The form of home in its mist-laid thatch,
Its mizzled glade, the cottage stands
In the soughing trees. A flaring match
In a dark old grate, and now my hands
Are warm along their roughened lines,
Worn on bars of golden cages.
Yet now I’m closed in these confines
And I am freed across new pages.
Could I live here and give up the searches
And lay new thatch and prune the birches?

Sonnet II