The Sod Hatch

We buried you in the morning, listening
In silence to thrums from the Interstate,
Buffets of wind that slapped blouses and shirts,
Shallow stabs of the gravedigger turning
A sod hatch onto your urn. When he tipped
The last spade he murmured That’s all she wrote
And our island became archipelago.
In the distance, the immutable
mausoleum: varved tombs of pink granite.

That afternoon, readying the garden,
I sank my spade into the bin, piled
Shovelful on shovelful like foothills
In a range. Raked the hills into plains,
Sifted midden, decaying from decayed.