You’ve been more than three years now
out here on the plain
stretched between horizons pegged
by what black trees remain.
You thought it some achievement
to arrive, but it was not;
where you ended up was just
the random, hapless spot
where you decided you were lost
and stopped. And at the end
Of that unsober quest for half-
dreamt things around the bend
you sat, breathing. Then started work.
Sobriety – a word
to dig with: first the grass,
the seed, the cricket-merd,
then roots and knots and ash.
And deep in the layered earth
ten thousand summers, rotted down:
horse-bones, potsherds, weasels’ teeth;
old bits of grief like half-burned logs,
half-forgotten pain;
not yours, not mine, not anyone’s,
just life’s, out on the plain.