I Dig Holes

I put up signs
I dig holes
To sink the two supporting poles

From Inverness by the A96
Giving ground, tea-biscuit sodden
Where your spade disappears in an anguished grin
Between the beach and Culloden

To Maryhill, hard across from the barracks
Brittle earth pings a chime
Where you delve through a strew of discarded kebab
And scratch at compacted time

And at every dink your shovel snags on Snickers wrappers, Asda bags
On ringing half-brick, stubborn flints, where streetlight glow on sump oil glints
On mattress springs, on bits of birds, on plastic soldiers, pitbull turds
Where sparking blade on chuckie dickers, electric flex endeavour throttles
Entwined in pairs of naughty knickers, scrabbled shards of Buckie bottles
Smashed in bone-brained drunken fights, and your shuddering blade on a bath tap bites

At Inverness I was arm's length in
To a hole the width of my head
In five minutes flat, and the soil blood russet
With the crumble of gingerbread

But in Maryhill each inch is striven through black formica, knitting pins
By pick-axe swung and pinch-bar driven through lager lovelies Tennents tins,
Long lost forgotten thruppeny bits, a pulp of unpaid poll tax writs
Seams of crushed up wally dugs by workers, marchers, dancers dunted
Stratas pure of round-pin plugs, previous rooters' chisels blunted
Mongrel chewed St Mungo's bones, chibs and chanties, sticks and stones

At Culloden I found nothing much
One shard of a single mystery
The basket-work grip of a broken sword
I guess they just don't have the history