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Regions as layers for deep time storage /

Perform a regional invocation
to draw something up from the localised past /
Place your clay offerings
among the hawthorn leaves
on the slopes of the greenbelt /
Bury your wooden effigies beneath loose Earth
in a circle of small bones —
the remains of a magpie or treecreeper /

From your backpack pull the jar
of hair and iron nails, withered red berries /
Desiccated leechwort bound with twine /
Little pockets of skin folded and sown like leather /

With surgical precision
open the veins etched across the territory
and the spectra of history oozes through /

The land spits up thick liquid time /
Spectral phosphors glow over marshland at night /
Estuary, tributary, mudflat /
Salt dry skin peels from bone /

This is anxiety about worn places /

Burning like static off pirate radio /

(Excerpt. The Gradual Mutation of The Territory, 2013).

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