A shabby and uncherishable growth,

it is at first unrecognised and scarcely noticed

as you make a roadside halt, your visitor’s eye

lured by distant iconic vistas. And so,

 

inveigled always beyond the details,

you appraise each photo op, framing,

say, the Silent City raised up against the sky

on self-absorbed strategic heights;

 

or lose yourself in contemplation,

gazing through the Azure Window,

its accidental rock a masterpiece

shaped by the weather’s bag of tricks –

 

a monument to impermanence

where, returning, you can see at your feet

the evidence of countless tiny deaths

that went to form the island,

 

remembering, too, that the citadel

was built on fear. And later at the tourists’

market, jostled by crowds and trapped,

you sample the liquor of the prickly pear –

 

sweetish and pink, a shot of fire 

laced with recognition, for now you’ll see it

everywhere in spiked mittens

scrabbling over a drystone wall,

 

or the breeze block ruins of an outhouse.

Unprepossessing, thuggish,

it hoards its life and moisture in the fibrous

tangle of an impenetrable heart.