Landfill

Amitchell125, "Sutton Hoo burial ground," 2013

The barrow is breathing out. Those past lives
we’ve cast off into a bin, onto a mud hill for
burial slowly transform into a methane sigh.
The flagger helps us pull the load off, and we
commiserate with his working on the holiday
weekend when he should be drinking a beer.
He’s our guide in this land of dead things and
I want to give him a coin for the passage, but
no time, he’s on to the next, stepping lightly
over scrap wood, a child’s ball. A tumulus, all
swollen, ripe with the detritus of our material,
man-made world—we can feel it shifting and
exhaling like a dozy pig the size of a mountain,
flatulent, grunting barrow-dreams in its sleep.