Well Digger – Clayton Montgomery

June 10, 2026

They say you’ve come from
far away, so I’ll tell it to you now.
Watch closely
the rising and setting of this sun,
its heat, the way it
mixes with asphalt and makes
aphrodisiacs. You’re new to this,
that much I can see, but
with time you’ll feed bailing wire
through your belt loops
and feel heat traverse you,
in a desperation that
is so deep that it spills from you like
blood and forms a small, glistening
pool around your ankles.

They say I water the pasture out back
with spite,
but seeing a thing
and knowing it
are very rarely the same.
This I want to show you:
when substance and absence
become one,
that it makes no difference
if the pasture sparkles
with dew, or
burns in flames.