Donkeys

This is a wasted place, this blasted heath.
Here men have scraped and burnt and dug
For sand and clay and and stone while deep beneath
The ancient, roiling tropic nighttime swamp,
The Habitat of dinosaur and dragonfly,
Is soaked into the yellow sands of time,
The blackened blood from some- prehuman war.
But Now the grotesque scars are soothed and healed
And four brown donkeys work to tame this wilderness
Amidst the autumn warmth of Whin and gorse,
The Home of hare and deer and harrier.
They nod the power into light
And, by their tireless, ceaseless work,
The wilderness creeps out from underneath.