Days like these I’m squandering the circle

riding out on my hobby-horse, my long-nosed

metal detector, on a jaunty tangent

to forage among weeds.
Past the last of the smoking utilities

I saunter, humming an irrational

number by a latter-day monk.

There’s still some ground
out here that’s good for a

good-for-nothing, an in-

betweener neither fish

nor flesh, parboiled detective,
diviner of shoots and nuts

and bullets spent under the dust.

A picker-up and turner-over,

bad debt collector magnetised
by scrap and straggly growth,

against-the-grain survival of

perversity in adversity. It all goes

in my sack for due consideration 
later, but today I aim to go

too far.  I reach the limits

and approach the wire where

the corpulent border guard in blue
doesn’t shift from his post. I seen you coming,

kid, he says, and waves me ominously

through. Just keep moving—don’t stop

till I can see the back of you.