The Vessel

You had no care for the debris
of brick lumps
and shards of glass;
even these fragments of an earthenware vessel,
emerging near the primroses like chipped teeth,
were just as freely tossed to the weed bucket
from the fists of wet clods
your rake sifted, levelled and set.

You said it to me as if it was an answer,
that the place where the elderberries grow
was once a builder’s yard;
a flooding of dry cement and breeze blocks
that stopped the plants from growing;
even a metal gate with rust bitten limbs
was hauled like a carcass from the shallow bed of brick rubble
that turned the earth crimson.

This was where we left each other.
Your transcendence in the maternal rhythms
of combing out dead roots and snuggling
wet peat to the fresh sprouts of knapweed,
and mine,
in the vision of a peasant girl;
the sight of her callous ridden fingers
lifting the first drops to her cracked winter lips.
That smooth ceramic bosom
Filled with water.