Bill Keen Poet Elegiac Lyric

Buried Maidens

for SeamusHeaney
			      1939-2013
			
			A flap of wings
			and agitated rustlings
			in the darkness
			jar forth protective prayers
			for mice and voles
			and winks of thought
			that barely lit
			on the page of day

			before the sky’s hunger
			pitched down-devouring
			as if commissioned by
			some cleansing spirit
			to sweep away all evidence
			that these girls had lived,
			had sipped dew from buds
			or feasted on a wind-born grain.
		
			Doggedly elders buried bones
			in shale, whispering,
			“Thus we will hide this history.”
			But Seamus’s spade dug deep
			into the mystery
			and taught us how to read
			the twisting motives
			in our own soft guts
			by learning how to dig.

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Jake Aller March 3, 2019 at 12:38 AM I liked the ending of this poem learning how to dig nicely done also like the first stanza

Jake Aller March 3, 2019 at 12:38 AM I liked the ending of this poem learning how to dig nicely done also like the first stanza