Highways Maintenance – The Poet On Work Experience Poem by Roger elkin

This week it’s digging ditches, and I’ve been assigned to Jack.
He doesn’t banter much – has got his fags so rarely mithers
Me but stands there, grins and smokes, or takes a casual hack
At last year’s rioting weed, while I nick the ground, cutting back
Clean, straight lines for the water-course from weather’s
Crumblings so hill-springs can resume their former route.

The spade is Jack’s: semi-circular, ugly-looking brute,
More of a grimace than a smile, honed and keen-edged
By use. To start, it’s a soft thud into roots, instep wedged
Against the blade, and strength shared out between a lunge
From somewhere just above the groin but beneath the waist,
Till the quag of soil spits, sucks, gives and wets like sponge.
Next the lift, all the time willing mud to stay complete,
Fingers-crossed it won’t collapse on self. For a really clean cut,
One straight swing is best. Speed helps. To hesitate
Is to give the sludge reason to rebel. Afterwards, a neat
Backwards arc, taken steadily, then a slight, twisting knock
And off the stoppage slides on grass – it’s a piece of cake! –
Wedges of it castellate the verge at regular treads.
Each one’s a year’s cross-section: the road’s caviar-grit,
The rich humus, the moth’s laced wings suddenly caught
In slush, and, now, the anaemic veins of springing seeds:
A geology of growth striated in this gulleying aqueduct.

I marvel at this trench, and what the hedge confirms:
The shrew’s bleached skull, the kestrel’s yesterday snacks,
Lean bones, moles strung on the barbed-wire’s cruciform,
The catkin’s citrine swinging. All this is beyond Jack’s
Understanding. Knowing his real strengths lie with tarmacs
Not ditches and drains, I suffer silently his smokes and grins.
The sum of our differences is this: while he covers up cracks
To keep them down, I dig deep to reveal the bottom of things.