A Golden Shovel after Shakespeare
the garden yawns: it has just struck two
o’clock. small creatures crawl, summer-drunk and muffled by heat. in the dirt, a bee
tumbles over and over itself, belly showing, legs whirling dust. i excavate, scooping up an ore
made of hot earth and gravel and grass and animal, a hysterical knot
of black back leg and sun-drowned wing. i, too,
take on that silent frenzy of his. i cannot leave him here, cannot let him be.
the sun sinks, somehow, and the garden yawns again. he is drowning. that
steady, mortal drown. slowing down, slowing, down – weightless, now. he is –
still. curled in a ball, my cheap handful his grave. it isn’t enough. the
sun sets, and i ask him where he wishes to be. but he has no breath to tell me, no mouth to question.
