Laura Ring

Grimes Grave

All across Suffolk, the flint mines pit the heath—
Devil’s Holes gouged like fingers into earth.

You are pelt-bent, neolith, hunched in the deepening
shaft. Burn a clod of fat to guide you to the seam.

Here is the blood smell of antler, scapula, scraped
against chalk and chalcedony. There, the nine heads

gifted to Grim; a phallus for the fertile tap.
I picture your descent, a planet’s gravity

pressed upon ribs, your face tamped
in flawless silicate. Miner, a devil

to haggle for blade, buried with slag and bone
until soot-drunk, sun-shy you rise

to the birch-bare roof, the comfort of air,
the sound of hammerstone and trade.

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