The twenty-sixth of May (one poem still owing)

Renovation poem #4: foundation

Walking home there is the wet excavation
the machine just at the top
of the pipe-wreathed hole
on the wet meat sliced clean
of deep down mud
I looked along all the edges
attempted grids diagrams
graduations
but all there was
was the ground
up
soil crumbling dry
toppling
in the sunshine

Walking home there are the teenage girls
in hajibs trying to persuade
each other
to swing
the sandbox grit
in the air their heels
grinding on the leaf-littered
ground
but each of them
thinking of being airborne
of pointing their heels
up