Trill of beak into birch. Dawn spooks the graveyard into silence. A heart hardens at God’s withered finger reaching but not reached for. I trim the hedges and the whir of ****-eater disturbs a nest of yellow jackets into tornado, dust devil, of translucent wings and sting. I walk among the dead three times a week. I am learning their language. They relearn the mundanity of white noise above and quietly forget, quietly forgive. This hill is the crest on a wave of coffins, each one a boat through the world below. Submerged in a bloodshot morning I listen to a woodpecker in its throes of building a home out of the depths of bark. In the chill, the soft fog rolling, it pecks and it knocks. The doors to these lives long closed, I hush. I do not believe God will visit these grounds to reclaim his clay: I plant flowers in it between the plots, each name engraved of marble a blank stare. The flash of red flushes from budding branches and I return to work. No one answers. I relearn the dead’s language, their silence, relearn every day how to repair stillness.