The hunch-backed hag is dragging plants from out
of the ground, black ridges etched into the hillside.
She pays me no attention though I am ten yards away;
ancient shape, deaf perhaps.
Further down the slope, an old man hefting a boulder,
feet set in tussocks of colourless grass;
back gnarled; legs, arms angled
so he and drudgery have become one.
The last, still red, haws are hanging from her fingers;
a robin’s song bursts from his chest;
its moment of freedom rising,
the hill traps it instantly in its sullen ear.
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