I Am the Gravedigger’s Husband

She opens the shed, gathers tools, and guides her
wheelbarrow to a family plot marked by plastic lilies,

its wet dirt mound covered with astroturf. Today’s work
is a girl newly gone, the casket very small.

Settling in, she numbly nods and digs. The spade
quiets the earth, shhh shhh, nothing but the sound

of nesting birds, some spring crackling in the woods. She holds
her hands up to sunlight—dirtied whorls, love and life lines

illegible. Things bury themselves when time is lost. Her fingers
loosen a blind clump of root, a shark’s eye shell,

India rubber ball, a baby’s buttoned boot, a chipped china cup
and rusted spoon; she places them gently back to rest, digging

toward clearer faults. Today the wind brings change, and above
these clouds, the sky remains an open vault. Here below, too much

to sort and sift; groundwater sets in, bones rise, and coffins break.
She’s spaded all into loose loam. The weeping willows cast long

shadows; the day is wearing thin. Her thermos gasps as she opens
it, still warm. Another hour and she’ll head home to a dinner

laid out with care. We’ll talk of small things, then wash and tidy up.
Reading side by side, we’ll note the summer sun is slow

to set but let the night unfold into the familiar creaking
of our bed. This is where we rest in strata still unknown.