Immersed in the ruin made of our yard by the digger, I tried to pick

porcelain, rooted pug, glass from a slurry that accumulated

around the smashed ends of the drain. The whole thing

                                                                                   a disaster

parched, slimy, I raked about in the muck with both shovels:

the sharp, prodding one; the more hard-working, loping one. A fine Bruce
of a tool, something to hide oneself inside the scene with.

The sheen of sliced earth was an eye on me. I clapped it with Bruce,
jabbed it with the prodder, picked out its woken edges, irate jags
poking from the strata, and was in awe at this blind horizon,

a dead sun of sand over the dirt, far-off, ancient teacups

sailing heavy under the lips of the earth. There might have been

an imprint of held-down faces,

						  some exhibition of the trials

conducted on the headland: the fossil ashes of community

singing by a fire. Shades of composition devolved, assumed
insignificance in the trench, that boneyard, that riding sea.