This is a free sample from
The Gravedigger’s Roots
, poems by Robert S. King
. If you enjoy this sample, we hope you’ll consider supporting small independent publishers such as Shared Roads by purchasing the book, available in either print or ebook format. Visit Shared Roads at
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Copyright 2009 Robert S. King
All Rights Reserved
Published by Shared Roads Press
Marietta, Georgia, U.S.A.
for Diane, an old soul and friend to mine
Against the Graveyard’s Greater Wall
Against it the wind piles up and dies.
It is star high, worm deep.
Hawks explode against it;
roots bleed against its sharp edges.
Leaves clatter halfway up a ladder,
then flutter down
into the dead eye of the storm.
All roads merge against it
and wrinkle up into dead ends,
all miles ever travelled,
all the old footprints
twisted into the same old story.
Only an inner rain almost turns it clear,
this great wall,
this mirror.
The Gravedigger’s Legacy
I am told to keep my shadow busy.
I am to some the one to do a lowly job,
and because years have bent me
lowest to the earth,
I do it well into the fading light.
As the night shifts, my shadow works
within me like a chill,
yet I know while I feel his shivers
that I have time to burn.
The other side of the moon turns around tonight,
shades my face from the stars
climbing higher above me,
while I dig for an answer come from darkness.
My shovel frames a perfect black window.
I keep my head just above it,
watch the lost world of foggy street lights
swaying and smearing,
a thick wind turning visible and mean,
wrecking bats and rescues.
Time is another impatient hole
I cannot crawl out of.
I have never gotten to the bottom of a grave,
nor have I seen who in the black hole
twists the brightest light into nothing.
And I dare not weep
for those more dead than I.
Tears could harden into glass,
cut my outstretched hands
that could not break their fall.
Acknowledgments
Grateful acknowledgments are made to the following publications in which these poems first appeared, sometimes in earlier versions:
Black Bear Review: "Condensation,” "Graveside Pyre,” "Moving to the City”
California Quarterly: "Discoveries of the Shovel,” "The Gravedigger Blows on the Bottle”
The Chariton Review: "Feeding the Body of Earth”
The Cape Rock: "A Matter of Time”
Dead Angel: "Why Graveyards Are Full of Bright Birds”
Great River Review: "Blame It on Genealogy”
Hampden-Sydney Poetry Review: "Darkness Too Is a Mirror,” "The Gravedigger Wiping Sweat”
Hellas: "Epitaph for a Blind Man Murdered”
Immortelles: Poems About Life and Death by New Southern Poets (Xavier Review Press): "The Gravedigger’s Night Out”
The Kenyon Review: "If God Pretends,” "A Wingbeat of Hope”
Loch Raven Review: "The Gravedigger’s Pay Dirt,” "Graveyard Shift,” "The Gravedigger’s Plot”
Lungfish Review: "Why the Dead Are so Passive”
Pendragon: "The Ghost in the Barn Light,” "The Ghost Observes His Body”
The Plastic Tower: "The Gravedigger Pacing His Cage”
Poem: "The Black Lady,” "Burying a Mute,” "The Death of Magic,” "Karma of a Gravedigger,” "The Old Deeds of the Gravedigger,” "The Gravedigger Prays for Sunset,” "Snowhaunt”
Poems That Thump in the Dark: "The Suit with the Missing Buttons”
Poetic Space: "Where the Wind Writes Our Names”
Riverrun: "Dream of the Hollow Bone,” "The Gratitude of the Dead,” "The Gravedigger’s Black Apple Beating”
Slant: "Birthday Drive”
Soundings East: "The Only Recognized Award for Drinking”
Underground Voices: "The Gravedigger's Workday,” "The Crow’s Orbit”
Visions International: "Against the Graveyard’s Greater Wall”
Whistling Shade: "The Gravedigger’s Legacy”
Windless Orchard: "Orphans Adopting Themselves”
Xanadu: "Communion”
Zuzu’s Petals: "Doing the Dirty Work”
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