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Gone Digging a deep hole helps with grief: that way, your whole body can weep as the shovel's blade briskly scalps a grave rectangle from backyard grass, sets the weedy turf aside for later. Somehow, it helps to keep moving, to step ahead then lift the topsoil out before attacking sticky layers of clay and clods and rocks and stubborn roots spreading from a nearby line of trees . . . He never dug so far down or so well. O the dampflame ofhis living tongue. It helps to kneel to spread pine straw across the floor of that little cellar where he'll soon sleep unwhimpering under scattered petals and his blanket and piled earth shoveled gently back in and the crazy-quilt grass mounded on top so it will melt flat when he's finally gone. —Michael McFee 26 ...

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