If they had hair it was gray, <br />the backs of their hands wormy <br />currents of blue veins, old men <br />the undertaker believed <br />had already lost too much <br />to the earth to be bothered <br />by what they found, didn't find, <br />brought there that May afternoon <br />dogwood trees bloomed like white wreaths <br />across Jocassee's valley. <br /> <br />They took their time, sought the shade <br />when they tired, let cigarettes <br />and silence fill the minutes <br />until the undertaker <br />nodded at his watch, and they <br />worked again, the only sound <br />the rasp and shuck of shovels <br />as they settled deeper in graves <br />twice-dug, sounding for the thud <br />of struck wood not always found— <br />sometimes something other, silk <br />scarf or tie, buckle, button <br />nestled in some darker earth, <br />enough to give a name to. <br /> <br />One quit before they were done, <br />lay down as if death were now <br />too close to resist, and so <br />another stepped in his grave, <br />finished up, but not before <br />they shut his eyes, laid him with <br />all the others to be saved <br />if not from death, from water.<br /><br />Ron Rash<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-men-who-raised-the-dead/
