Story

Polite folk no longer called Emily a "girl."
She had passed the bar--like her father--
and established herself in a severe world.
But at thirty-four, she left the law
to keep a graveyard.
"What will your father say?" they asked
when she asked
for her "simple" grandfather's former position.
"Nothing," she replied.
And he said nothing (exactly) for years.

The minister called her grandpa "faithful,"
as she sat by her father, iron smooth for the keeper's funeral.
She learned the word by whacking weeds,
and mastering the trick of mowing a new grave
without scalping the top.
She learned that word, and another--even more beautiful--
in the few words of people who came to remember,
and in the many words--always the same four--
(pages of them in the keepers house)
practiced in a jagged hand for an epistle
which couldn't quite come into being:
dear emily,
dear emily,
dear emily,
love
grampa,
love
grampa,
love