Downstream

people scraping in the sand,
kids filling up buckets with
stones and bones. Volunteers
have set up a table with
pictures of animal skeletons; I
hand over a bone and am told
it’s a sheep’s metatarsal. Next
I present a piece of pipe; it
has quite a big central hole so
that makes it nineteenth-
century, then a green bit of
pottery which I’m told is a
piece of border ware from
Surrey or Hampshire made in