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Fred Johnson 
for Mike and Petra
By a simple act of grasping
The dry harvested earth, stalk ends
Yellowing and sharp and brittle,
You go into the earth in a way you
Wouldn´t think, where all the horizon
Comes to is a barely brushstroked line
Of rising dust and machines wider
Than a country road come white-eyed
Out of the quick night, reptilian,
Unmannerly and forcing you over
To the unditched dry verge.
This is where you are, driving
In the swelter and endlessness,
Crawling round a hot corner of
A village of red tiled roofs, seeing not one
Other soul whose country face might break
The day into the part before and after
You saw him, giving you two imprecise
But orderable halves by which time,
Which passed on here before you arrived,
Can be recounted.
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