The earth is still black
in this place of your birth,
only now the council does the digging.
No hammering loads on the stepped hill,
only the cemetery rock
needs heaving.
Swept it all under the carpet,
under the new contours of the vale.
They put the top back on
called back the birds
put flowers amongst the thorny grasses,
all, on that green bandaged hill.
And when Merak’s point of blackened share tries to part the land in our dreaming, down from the haul road the footsteps come, the new life to the stoic comes.
That noise of the nightly bin men,
crying calls to their beauties from the lane, brings us all to our windows twitching.
See, they come to lick the old life still, and we see more kick in the fox’s tail than in any of our morning ways, and in all the quiet dreaming that lives in prayers like our stories, now play dead.
And of the dawn
we hear the bird song calling,
not the ring of a shift change hymn.
And tear comes, and I don’t know why.
I cry just the same.
Lay the flowers on the grave
of blooms picked from on the hills.