hole

Every day that I dug the hole, the man came to ask me what I was doing.

I never answered him. While his dog was busy sniffing around the pile of earth I’d dug, I was busy digging.

Each day the man and the dog would reappear; and each day I dug the hole deeper.

Soon came the day that he needed to peer over the edge, down into the hole, his dog peering over the edge with him, to see me.

“What are you digging the hole for?” he called down to me.

And still I gave no reply.

It didn’t deter the man, nor the dog. Every day, the same routine: me digging and him asking, the dog sniffing.

Until one day the man and his dog arrived and I was waiting for them, standing on the edge of my hole, now many storeys deep.

The man peered down into the hole, and then he looked up at me. His dog did too.

“Why did you dig hole?” he asked. 

“To find the bottom,” I said. I pointed into the hole. “There it is.”

As we looked down into the hole, the wrapper from a Cadbury’s Fudge roly-polied up to the hole and over the edge, coming to rest halfway down the side.

vss #18