Butler Woman ~

It called for a headstone,
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 stony ridge
jagged by obelisks
to the skies beyond —
her open book
she sat reading from
and meditating 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.