Bent over double,
my spine crinkling
and made from tinfoil.

Like an old concertina,
you wheeze from
the stress of it all,
so do I, quietly
to myself.

You're startled upon
an anthill's discovery,
as if it were found in
a lover's rumpled bed.

Beetles clamber away,
away from the sweat,
from the sighs
given freely away
to Mother Earth,
or anyone who'll listen.

An emerald frog
springs from
a verdant patch,
into a wet ditch.

Unkind to the body,
is this toil,
but the thoughts roam,
like a pig in muck,
laughing,
if it could.

White cotton flowers
coat the ground,
like peckish gulls
         on a landfill,
or a sailor's corpse.

After tracks are made,
here left for there,
blood trickles
down shins,
knee-deep
in brambles.

The nest of the lark,
the hive of honeybee,
the owl doesn't dare,
the sweet tooth,
nor bare hand,
doesn't dare.

I go on walking,
with Quasimodo slouch,
feeling the spring
of the cracked ground,
kinetic and tepid,
under my own weight.

I could sleep
easy and dreamless,
away in a damp ditch,
pillow of frogs,
(still soft emeralds)
blanket of muck,
stiffening under
the sun on high,
shimmering soft and
red as a Bolshevik.

Then,
in 2,000 years,
I'll join them,
those who I saw
in a museum once,
with skin like
bog oak,
jaws ajar,
with eyes of dust,
they couldn't
look away.