BOY IN SAND

Fixed above the flames of stone,
He is more a statue,
Half finished,
Than a child.

Sweat alone,
Trickling and lost in the creek bed of his ribs,
Tells he is alive,

Hearing perhaps the thunder,
Mechanically induced and bursting from the south,
The guts of the hill erupt as the bomb,
Heaved on its long, electric course, ploughs in

And seeing the wings triumphant
On the rim of the sun,
The trail of vapour dirtying the sky
Like the breath of a thief.

But he stands, remote,
Grotesque,
Face bleached in the scouring wind,
Eyes, keen as a ferret's,
Scanning the grit that clings to the pustules on his hands.

Of no importance, to him,
The sharp, apocalyptic fuss,
Bomb crunch,
Or the righteous, alien words.

In the runnels of sand and stone
He has found,
Smooth as a pond,
A pocket of seeds,
Parcelled,
Stored and left
By a startled
Rat.

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