There is a gradient. The sky
moves from polluted red through pale
to black. And orange flashes as
the tractor trails wheat dust. The road

merges off the circular path,
intentions are coded in light.
Industrial farming machines
don’t fit through the old town crossing

and crunch the box off the lamppost.
In the streams of thick logistics
molecules are reshaped en masse,
and fly into the gradient –

the dark leans over the ripped grass
like a pervert, waiting to glance
the raw dirt and turn it to dust
to fall onto the road and sink

in the torrents of the moist air
gradient down to the river.
A car is shifted by the flood
and sits at the car park entrance.

Gradient of dystopia,
this passing through the osmotic
barrier of roads, where wheat dust
bounces, falls and scatters like bone