You might call this desire,
but I don't call it desire;
it is water, it is artesian, it is sulfurous,
it is a subterranean seepage,
it is a rising damp,
it is the way the dark spring
always finds a path to the pasture,
it is the rivulet blockaded and diverted
by wind-felled willows
but still finding another course
by forking, by burrowing and reappearing;
it is unstoppable,
leaking through cracks,
welling up,
like a bleeding from a slashed vein rising,
always coming to the surface...

You might name this lust,
but I don't name it lust;
it is the unkillable roots of the crack willow,
it is the tiny hair-like roots of the tree that weeps,
it is the microscopic, arthritic feelers
of the great tree
blindly searching, prising, prying at,
seeking out fissures in brickwork,
hairline fractures in pavement,
crazing in the blue and white tiles of your ancient walls...

You might say it's wrong,
you might say it's plunder...
but I don't say it's wrong;
it is inevitable,
it is gravity,
a pressure gradient, osmosis,
an orbiting; a quantum hunger;
it is night following day following night,
it's what has been,
it's what will be,
it's what I imagine but can't see,
it's what you see, but can't imagine...
it is better than moral-
it is what is...

You might call it fate,
but I don't call it fate;
I call it wait,
I call it patience,
I call it bellyache,
I call it lightning and thunder,
I call it night-after-night,
I call it in my sleep,
I call it awake,
I call it out to roam,
but you, sweet simpleton, you might call it home.
Others, perhaps wiser, might cast it asunder.