There was no good day’s work done no lingering, watching a setting sun as a world shifted axis, the stream this man once knew as a haven of eels, skirmishing trout, old tyres dried to a drain, water now black and thick.
Touching the cracked stream bed, he bows his head to a god and walks home, his hunger a prayer to ward off the leathering. Dust still on his fingers hand print in the crusted soil.