Dig

Finally have my brain back after months of searching for it. About time….

 

Nettle

 

Creep nettle.

Finger your way through hawthorn and fern,

reach beyond aged, cracked blackened roots.

Jut your bold-chinned youth

into the soft earth

and settle.

Claw down your tendrils and twist

soil beneath roots,

coil with bones and ashes and splintered pot and coal mines

and seeping cow piss

and leakage from the stream flood

into a labyrinthine sprawl.

 

I lifted fibrous forked out slice

steel cut against clay earth,

and slung into fire

a shaken head of ochre root hair.

And another and again

until the soil sank to soft crumb

unwound.