The Resurrection

I'd dared her to go in, and we came on that dare
to the road above Rose Hill Cemetery, and sat for a moment in the cab of my truck,
quiet, not talking, looking down
at the valley of stones, the bone-white
testaments prickling the hills.
All the way out she talked of death, her desire
to be cremated, have her ashes scattered
over Lake Rabun. In the new life she'd return
as a swan or a dove. What did I say?
That I believed in the new life too,
the resurrection of the body, and though I knew
the Lord could mend us ash by ash
I wasn't the sort to put Him to the trouble.
So I wasn't afraid, we were as different
as East and West, and the night was still cool,
not quite the season to fall in love
with the wrong woman. And if she was afraid
of anything, she didn't show it, only took
the flashlight off the seat, zipped her parka.
A bright half-moon, white as marble, hung
over the river, and I followed her
in that light as she edged through the trees
down the hill toward the gardens,
toward the creek, the row of bricked vaults.
I'd dared her to go in. Not into the graveyard,
but into a grave I knew lay open in the side
of a ridge, an old haunt, reputed hangout
of a witches' coven. And I wasn't afraid
until I stopped where the rock garden
bridges the creek, and the wind off the river
seemed the breath of the dead, or whatever
inside me was dying. Let's go, she said,
and pointed up the ridge where I had pointed
to the grave, and we followed the creek
up the valley, past the wrought-iron fences
and chairs, the patios and bedrooms
of the dead, without talking, without touching
or ever having touched, until we came
to the end of the valley, the black mouth
gaping behind branches. She knelt then
by the tree and shined the light----
wine bottles, a sardine can, stubs of iron bars
jagging those jaws with rusty teeth----
and with only a slight shiver against the cold,
we crawled into that belly of earth.
And what had I really expected to find? A pit
of beer cans, a clay chamber of dry roots?
Or that stir in the sudden falling of dark,
like the brush of a cobweb against an ear,
like the silky crawl of the first hungry worm,
the gentlest touch,
that first delicate laying on of hands?


David Bottoms