HORSE

A horse takes shape on a hillside.
It is three thousand years ago.

They are drawing the lines
of its body, digging and lifting

the skin of turf, exposing
the white flesh of earth

which buries its secrets
deep, has in its keeping

bones, flints, vessels
beads for spindle-whorls

hearth-stones
the grave-place of a child;

until time comes to carefully
shift the soil, begin to sift

and piece together fragments
of a story, making

- as we on earth have always done -
something whole from what is

broken, separate:
mud and fire that make the pot

chalk and grass the horse,
still galloping over the hill.

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