Digging a hole in winter,
mining without machine,
inviting the imagined hard labor
of Gulag or prison;
shovel blade rebounds
off unyielding ground,
too cold to spark;
inches of earth split
in broken fragments
like busted brown glass
across the permafrost.
Sweat is forming but freezes
across our foreheads;
a sheet of salty ice dams perch
at the eaves of our brow.
We measure the hole
with guiding eye, slide
the corpse across the snow,
still as a statue,
abandoned Hachiko.
Father lays a boot on its chest,
pushing the last breath taken
some time in the night,
but it remains too big to bury.
“We have to hurry
before your sister sees us.”
A grim race begins
for the final few inches,
to cover the hole,
throwing frozen dirt
onto dirty fur,
living and dying
by the worm.
Published in Qua Literary & Fine Arts Magazine, Winter, 2012. University of Michigan-Flint
Published in Collected Poems, 2016
©2012, Dan Schell, Flex Your Head Books