At the Cemetery

Two men, suited black
and broad:  Their shoulders
buckle.  Their arms and hands

scissor up then down along
the back of each, slow
as the priest’s blessing hand,

like wounded butterflies
joined in air, one right-,
one left-winged.  Their hands

carve and crush terrain
along the ridge, the bone,
the hump of human time:  

the shoulder cracked
by a pitch in ’48,
the Korean bullet,

its knot between ribs,
the hard bend his wife
hammered on him

that day she died.

(first appeared in Poet Lore)
winter/spring 2007 r.kv.r.y. poetry

by Greg McBride