In the great heat
of the end of July
plants demand water
with many leaved tongues
and gratefully accept
all offers.
Idly scanning
the dripping
dug out earth
beneath the stone fence
my eye was snagged
by the delicate outline
of an earlike handle
revealed in the soft lighting
of the sunset.
Carefully
I extract
a whole handle
and several greying yellow
small shards
the remains of a water jug
or perhaps
a cooking pot,
or a honey vase
broken
aeons ago
and thrown with a careless hand
into the bushes.
A butter fingered housewife?
a drunken reveler?
a thirsty and hasty slave?
An incidental
marker down the centuries,
"here man passed".