Third Day of Work

It was explained to me today as I officiated a wake
Why it is in Florida we bury our dead
Not as simply as they do in New York.

“A shovel’s job, in this soft soil,” my partner Marv said
“Wasn’t enough anymore to keep the dead where we left them.
Storm floods floated caskets back up to the surface.
This was years ago, just before Evelyn passed.”

His voice oscillates, like an old engine hiccupping up hill
Then opens his wallet like a tiny bible, its sacred contents shook in arthritic fingers
He thumbs a lady’s faded picture out from behind laminate, hair mahogany red
Perfectly circular eyes green as cucumber slices.
Atlantic City Honeymooners. They met at Bingo night. Seaside casino dreams.
His crooked black cummerbund sat well with his piano key smile,
Says he lost both teeth on Ike’s beach.

I hear air
Whistle through the empty spaces
Where his teeth would have been.
“She hadn’t been buried a month when the hurricane hit.
Floods so high they pulled spines and jaws and jewelry down from the trees.
We found her nine plots over,
Swimming in the water spilling from the birdbath,
Scavengers had made nest of her, I only found one eye,
Floating like an olive in the mud.”

The shovels now collect rust while gravediggers rush to operate tractors,
And bless bulldozed holes with cement, to lock our skeletons in place,
One final position.
With the dead paved down, no amount of rain could exhume Evelyn again.