Learn from a gravedigger how to dig down
to prepare the ground to receive a body
in box or winding sheet. Turf nicely sliced
in season is measured by the eye that
knows where to cut––how long, how wide,
how deep. Muscles of shoulder and back
involved follow the eye’s instruction, known
from a life of pride in the work of putting
bodies into the ground for storage
tucking them in with a promise of daybreak
bursting forth on a day unknown, and beyond
the range of what they could understand.
