Reflections received only by dusk

Cathedrals now rise within the walls

And grow into its ribcage

* * *

It collapses into a symphony of wails

Whose words are dead as pipes burst

Full lungs of basalt dust

* * *

It is dawn

And finally concedes that it no longer

Must deal with one thousand stars

Of non reflection.

The pine needle sits between the space

Of drawing blood and lifting flesh

Shunned over by a dense black sun that hides

And wishes nothing, but slowly shrieks beside

* * *

The crack of arsenic white beneath the shoe

For movement is to live and life to move.

Mouth parted, as if for a second

Between the graves of the shelled sands

She hacked apart those heavy walls

That bubbled out of fresh fractures

* * *

Boiling on the surface of her heavy gaze

As high towers crumbled behind us

And the wild horses run away

From yet another black hole.

Cut-throat throat cutting

The last smash of hostile stars

Laying dormant in a cathedral

Of lofty ceilings and ancient wonders

* * *

Dividing the space around them, but

No more are the winged warriors

Nothing whispers, cast it down again, an

Endless expedition of radiant blackness

* * *

A deserting army of moments

All invading themselves with mangled blades

After the fight, they return to rooms

Furnished long ago, with emptiness

* * *

To do this all over again?

Thunder of flanking hoofs

Flare of monstrous steam

Fear in flight meet flayed farewells

Ghosts stand where once had been

* * *

Twisted are the flanking hoofs

How lead has made all weep

Red mist descends on empty bore

Choke bellows from the teeth.

Lay her down to rest beside

The thrumming fields

Or by the misting tides

To cure her skin

Of this overgrown century

* * *

Arms crossed over the rocks

Reaching across the sweeping air

She leaps readily towards transcendence

Catching one last speckled glimpse

Of her fleeting revengeance 

* * *

As the boots land upon the shore

And gauntlets grip against the oar

She passes through another door.

I’ve been trying to find the words to describe exactly what I feel when I metal detect out in the countryside. Now that summer's over, it only seems fitting that I at least get these words out, lest they fade away with the seasons. I thought as though this could be a formally composed, comprehensible series of logical thoughts, but realistically, writing how I feel in a much less formal way seems to legitimise those feelings. After all, it reflects passion, and we all know that metal detectorists are informal, formless, and passionate, as I am and so many of my compatriots are. That’s not to say we aren't serious, of course—we very much can be—but serious in a way that connects us to our passion and the shared history we unearth and preserve.

* * *

One thing I have come to realise in life is that nothing we own is truly ours, and this has never been more apparent than when I’m metal detecting in the vast rolling pastures and hills of Britain. As I strap my equipment and tools to my belt, throw the shovel into the earth, and rest my machine upon it, I am reminded of this. The openness of the countryside speaks to this if, for one second, you choose to listen. In fact, I was reminded of this very lesson just a few weeks ago. I unscrewed the cap of my flask to pour myself a hot drink in the early hours, fog still clinging to the recesses of the cold gullies. The steam rose past my face, and the flapping of a buzzard’s wings reminded me that we are naught but custodians of the things we hold—for a time—and then that time passes. In that very same fashion, the thought drifted away, washed by the sound of the brook running behind me.

* * *

Here’s another beautiful thing: I am reminded every time I twist my ankle on disc-cut and ploughed fields, whenever dust and grit embed themselves into my eye when digging, whenever I cut myself and bleed in pursuit of the unknown, whenever I sit exhausted in the car after being covered in dirt and mud, whenever I am soaked and chilled to the bone after being caught out by the wind and rain on the open field, whenever I am sunburnt, cracked, and scoured by the summer sun, whenever insects stick to my sweating brow or flick at my ears, and whenever I find nothing after hours of backbreaking digging—that it is an honour to be there. I am present in very much the same way that those before me had been. I am grateful and resolved to know I walk in places where not many nowadays do or even remember. I walk with the ghosts of those unknown before us and still see the women and men working the fields. I see the rugged land differently now, and with every shovel’s thrust, my eyes open a little wider. Like looking through a veil I’ll never see through clearly, but still trying to peer through and reach the other side.

* * *

Ultimately, true wealth is not in finding a gold noble in the earth, but in experiencing the incomprehensible passage of time through the land, in solitude or shared with like-minded individuals. And so, I find myself not only thinking about those who dropped these objects, and their histories, but also about who will share this thought two thousand years from now. Who will become the custodian of the things I leave behind, if any such things remain? And who, among the dry stubble of the fields and the grasshoppers singing in the hedges, will spare a thought for those of us digging this land today?