in your garden, perhaps,

between the tomato vines

and the carrots, just as

you’re getting the coffee on

and recalling the farmer who ran

outside, hearing a burglar,

to stare out through a hole in the roof of his barn

into the circle of an older

flashlight, the verger who instead

of daffodils

discovered a lump of black, a foundling left

on the threshold with the chuckle

of youthful heavens deep inside it,

cattle lowing in pain in the dawn,

the milk gone sour, a man coming out

of a café to find a ton

of scrap-metal his car-key still fits –

or that it was always the beginning

of some cult, or the moment the plague sets

in, on a monday morning