I am ready
to ring your rib

around my wrist
in triumph—

the faintest of relics    
enliven me. My lips

still layered
as in the night you lost them.

I hope to hammer  
your heart

& stuff its soil
in the sutures

of your skull;
I want to call that

the shadow to
kintsugi;

I want our memories never
to seep; to set

them up for decryption.
Unloving is a study—

consider an archaeologist’s
tentative hands

demystifying an artifact
once treasured for its secret

& leaving no spots
behind.

I walk twenty steps, five feet
down into the darkness
of buried secrets
on the outskirts of the oasis

I walk twenty steps, five feet
in the excavation
next to the shallow ditch
which was once a pond

Discovered from the sky
vaguely marked in the sand
by odd gauge values
of the substrate

Back into the light
where a man sits
on the roots of an old tree
looking at me

Compelling, he beckons me
pointing to his water bottle
and I realise
that he knows the answers

to the questions I shall ask
when he is no longer there

Flavia swore as the heavy earthenware pitcher slipped from her hands and crashed onto the uneven flagstones. As she knelt in the puddle of tepid water and started gathering in the pieces, she heard the rapidly approaching footfall of an armed legionary.

‘Leave that now, there’s no time. We ride for York immediately.’
‘But mea domina...’
‘The Wall is breached. Hurry, puella, or she'll start without you!’

Flavia picked up her sodden skirts and ran.

                                                           ­  §

I held my breath as the last piece of the Corbridge ewer slid smoothly into place and wondered at the exquisitely crafted motif which encircled the body of this ancient vessel. A procession? A cavalcade? Curious, if not for the men-at-arms, I would have thought it a pageant. And there in a covered wagon a noble woman looking back at a young girl standing on the steps of a villa holding her hem in her hands.

I am here on an archaeological quest,
to satisfy many a curious mind's request
for knowledge on antiques and artifacts
of Egypt's long extinct historical facts,
in treasured sands buried, like gold mines earnestly
sought for in stories shrouded in mythology.
With a large contingent just as curious as I,
hardly daunted by curses, but with shoulders high,
We went to the field, the sun baking us chaps
to a baker's delight. With our rumpled maps,
we searched every clue, and were bitten perhaps
by a million flies. Getting relief from sunless skies
in times of fair weather, whilst hoping something lies
in the depths of the hot sands for our very eyes
to see. With my tools by hard work and search worn out,
I brushed to full view, the tomb, brilliantly carved out
of young blue blooded Tut, regally laid to rest.
To my wearied colleagues I spoke in real earnest:
'To exhume the past, we are here at last.'

Your broad forehead glistening--
kissed with salt from the sweat
of the sea you've never seen.
The clay is still under your nails
from molding the beaker beside you.
Meadowsweet on your lips
you lay down to die
with the softness illness brings.
Tonderghie copper hair
falls over your knees,
body curled as a new babe's.
Carry with you our songs to the afterlife
from this cold forest
to clearest skies.

When archaeologists pull
something out of the dirt,
they call it a discovery.

I imagine them years from
now, "discovering"
skyscrapers and microwaves
and styrofoam cups. I can see
them with my broken body.

There's something different
about these bones, they say,
something heavy.

There is a message in here
somewhere. There is a riddle
that still twists my hands up.

They said there was a place
inside me where the music
had gone wrong.

I said, There is no such thing
as wrong music.

I've been at myself with a pick
axe for a long time, trying to
discover something new and
groundbreaking underneath.

*just sediment

for RFG


You told me of your love for London
and I, of mine for Jerusalem.
And we speak of our second homes
and our first loves,
and how those memories
should be left for the archaeologists,
and how we must for the time being
carefully avoid the subject
each of the other
like diplomats
in London or Jerusalem
busily seeking
positive signs,
in one and the other
or those things
we love elsewhere
and wish we could have
here at home.