Butler Woman ~

It called for a headstone:
'twas raw earth covered with snow
that had fallen
since we had buried her
two lonesome months before.

But first the earth must settle,
he said, who was chiseling
her name now in stone.

The cemetery is not far
from where she watched
right up to the last, wheelchair-erect,
from her dining room window,
letting her eye skim westwards

across that ridge

to the graveyard,
jagged with obelisks,

then to the skies beyond —
her open book
she sat reading from
and pondering on.

From where her gravestone lies
you can see at times
flashes of light
from off the windowpane
where she sat,
and near it that valiant old oak,
still standing watch,
as if she were living there yet.