For 50p I’d fill a bucket with stones;
the garden like a subterranean gibber plain.
I’d try to work out the monetary fraction
each stone represented;
what grain of time was held
within each rough or rounded shape.
Once, I filled it mostly with dirt
but you dug down like an excavator
exposing my fraud
growling at me to start again.
When I told you to shut up
a hydraulic boom and bucket
quieted me for three days.
We had to start again.