This Isn't the Sort of Thing That Happens to Someone Like You

(before the embers of the closing of the day)

the sky is the colour of your father’s eyes.

A darkening, muddied blue,

hiding shadows

turning away. Awake, still;

alive, just;

but going.

Going gently.

The workers have left the field and collected their pay,

measured by the weight of the food they have gathered.

The marks of their footprints are fading,

dusted over with soil blown in by a wind from the sea.

back

What he thought he’d find.

There is no history here.

No dramatic finds of Saxon villages.

No burial mounds or hidden treasures.

No Tollund Man.

Only the rusted anchors our ploughs drag up,

left when these fields were the sea.

back

Those rusted anchors have been sunk in the soil

ever since before it was drained, and sometimes

the turning of the earth brings them closer to the surface

and sometimes

it will sends them further down.

Buried out there at the edge of the field.Butyouwerethere

The sound of plough metal on soil, the roar

of stones & earth.

As he/it Tumbles further down or is hauled to the surface.