Days like these I’m squandering the circle
riding out on my hobby-horse, my long-nosed
metal detector, on a jaunty tangent
to forage among weeds.
Past the last of the smoking utilities
I saunter, humming an irrational
number by a latter-day monk.
There’s still some ground
out here that’s good for a
good-for-nothing, an in-
betweener neither fish
nor flesh, parboiled detective,
diviner of shoots and nuts
and bullets spent under the dust.
A picker-up and turner-over,
debt-collector magnetised
by scrap and straggly growth,
against-the-grain survival of
perversity in adversity. It all goes
in my sack for due consideration
later, but today I aim to go
too far. I reach the limits
and approach the wire, where
the corpulent border guard in blue
4doesn’t shift from his post. I seen you coming,
kid, he says, and waves me ominously
through. Just keep moving — don’t stop
till I can see the back of you.