What the Wood Made by Leaving

Four and a half metres of darker earth in a cemetery below an old Slavic stronghold, the shape of a log hollowed out to carry someone, narrow at both ends.

The wood went a long time ago. What's left is where it was. The ground took the boat's outline the way wet sand takes a foot, and then lost the foot.

Nobody knows yet if it ever floated. Maybe it was pulled up out of the river that had carried them all their lives. Maybe it was cut new, for this. Either way they put it to a boat's work: something carried, someone in it, going where the living don't steer. A picture would only show the trip. This held the bones.

Near the top, a silver ring worn at the temple, tiny beads of silver fused onto it, still bright. Lower down, the jewellery that went through the fire with the one they burned, and came out half-melted, and a single horse's tooth.

The stain isn't a picture of anything. Nobody drew it. The wood made it by leaving. The first picture of this boat is the one they're building now on a screen, layer by layer, out of the dark.