80 It Only Remains

I saw the pumpkins’ orange skins half-nestled in the soil like infants, fat & angry. The plot was cordoned off with candy-striped tape that snapped & loosened. It had rained all day until it stopped. The ground was buttery & slack; its surface was a carnival of worms; its inside was an aggregate of coins & teeth & other small losses: a book of songs, a bird’s fluted bones, an iron leprous with rust, some metal tools eroded to the point of being undesigned, chips of horn & shell, the fractured architecture of a plastic crate. I saw all this despite the fact I wasn’t there, which is to say I made it up. I saw the mercury & sulphur levels rise inexorably. I saw the priest, handsome in his robes. I saw the subtle bow of the horizon (which is the privilege of landlords & photographers) & above it swans like handkerchiefs. O Constance how good of you to come! I almost didn’t see you underneath that hat! I didn’t see the tree, or see it falling but I saw the flap of thready earth it ripped up with its roots & saw the fungus colonise