Old Bones

Earth copies ocean
its movements never stop.
As cold and warm above
below each other move
so do the clays and loams.

Less pronounced maybe
but swellings and contractions
nonetheless. Just listen
with a stethoscope
you'll hear them taking place.

Complaints this week
from Epsom residents
that cemetery bones
were breaking through the ground
and rising into view.

Something of the same
when I was still at school:
the bartering of bones
at playtimes, I recall.
(Alas, there were no skulls!")

Swollen by rain,
beds of London clay
had buckled those of shale,
dismantled skeletons,
driven bones above

and toppled headstones.
Many there were nearby
who thought it spirit work
remembering the ground
had suffered in the blitz,

recalling too, old tales
of people buried there
who might have bones to pick
with someone still alive.
They'd not go near at night!