I had a body buried in my backyard.

A gravedigger told me so.  He came at dead

of night, whistling at my window.  We

crept downhill into the creek’s floodplain,

past the ruined shed and underneath

the tall pear tree.  I slipped on rotten fruit.

His spade, I saw, was worn from much use.

The digging point was gone, the handle loose

where it joined the shovel head.  Around

his neck there hung a leather thong.  I heard

an eighteen wheeler hit the highway’s ruts,

the distant, haunting whistle of a train.

I sensed, rather than saw, a low, bright

planet in the sky.  And then, beneath

an arched mulberry tree, in grasses late-

summer high, he marked a spot and dug.

Spurred by strange anticipation, I dropped

to knees and helped with hands as best I could.

It was a deep grave, and our hands turned dirt

for what seemed a parade of nights, though really it

took only an hour or two.  He slowed, then,

and ordered me out of the hole.  With utmost care,

he uncovered a tiny body, an infant,

wrapped in cloth and delivered it up

to me.  Unwinding the linen strips, I saw

a boy, uncircumcised and of uncertain

race, and I did not find a belly button.

“How long has this been buried here?” I asked

the gravedigger.  “Thirty years and more,”

he said.  Then he took the leather thong

and draped it round the child’s neck, revealing

a locket which, when opened, held two strands

of hair.  “Eat,” he said to me.  I did,

and though they tasted separately of honey

together they were bitter.  I heard an owl

hoot against the darkness.  Then he gave

some cock-and-bull story, a rural lass,

a city lad, their secret, ill-fated love.

But I preferred to think that this must be,

in some sense, my unborn body by some miracle

preserved whole, and here I was, giving

myself some sort of rebirth.