What Lies Beneath 

I dug up so many things 

to make my garden

not only rocks

and pieces of slate

but tools from those who

had worked this difficult land.

I built walls from the rocks

and edged my new pond in slate.

The tools became decorations,

to tell the story of the land.

Then I found the tractor,

or so I thought, a toy 

some child had played with

dreaming of flat land

and good soil.

I looked more closely

and saw it was a soldier

in the driving seat.

Not a tractor then but 

some sort of killing machine

I buried it back where it came from.

It seemed the best thing to do with it.

https://www.consequenceforum.org/printjournals/p/volume-141-spring-2022