Broken Ground
All day, nothing
but frost, your spade, your hands,
the smell of raw clay bleeding
into the air like smoke. It hangs,
still waiting, in your throat.
All day, nothing
but the same repeated gesture, yielding
only fragments: split
sole of a single shoe,
cracked mouth of an inkpot.
At dusk, the plump half-moon
of a doll’s abandoned face.
Still you are here, as silence
gathers like birds in the trees around you.
You will be digging here,
perhaps all night, clearing,
finally, a throat for the mute earth,
for the bones that knock and knock
against your blade.
You are waiting for them to sing.
Printed from Cerise Press: http://www.cerisepress.com
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