The cemetery gate closes behind me with barely a squeak. I tiptoe past the neat mounds. Edged with rough stones, each grave is like a mini Stonehenge. Burial sites have been pegged with rock slabs by grieving parents. The makeshift headstones are unmarked, secured with rusty wire or hemmed by earth. Pennyweight Flat—1852, named for little value. No hope for alluvial fortune in this ground. Only the remains of mites, uncoffined, unregistered. Children cut down by diphtheria, typhoid and dysentery, by a creek polluted from the sluicing. Shaken, I stand in this paddock of bones. The tombs are as small as a newspaper page, tiny as words before the rush.

spring frost
stone circles
beside my feet