GRAVE DIGGER
March 16, 2011
© Fred Dumpling. Redistribution is prohibited.
One day, a man finds
two skeletons with partial ribs entwined.
He fills their grave with a shovel nearby
and carves into its shaft this epitaph:
"The grave digger and her skeleton man
whom she loves eternally with her bones."
The soil is soft beneath her shovel's tip.
It gives way easily to the sharp force
of the point as she heaves pile after pile
onto the grass, which is always greener
than her eyes' green behind her long white veil
before he lifted it high and kissed her,
or her eyes' green behind her black lace veil
as he descended into the gaping
earth. The still air keens. Her palms are calloused;
the wood is unkind to her untested hands,
and splinters burrow beneath her torn skin.
At last, her shovel strikes the buried box.
She drops her tool, sings a prayer, and then
clears away the rest of the soil with her
hands. The dirt creeps and crawls beneath her nails.
When the casket's clear, she takes her crowbar
and swings it down on all the locks. They break,
and she pulls back the heavy rosewood lid.
Her love lies upon the velvet lining,
Time and Nature having caressed his face
to peel the skin from his cotton ball eyes.
She kneels in his casket, and there she lies,
cheek to his suited chest, wedding worthy
in the fine trimmings of dirt and decay.
She lies upon that chest until her heart
ceases its beating, until she rots and
the creatures of the earth crawl into their
shared grave and devour her flesh, until the
wind washes their bones white, and then she lies
there forevermore.