Pastoral III: Alabama

The old growth is all but gone
Cut down to make
Backyard altars for the autumn
Decks on which pork is sacrificed
And pigskins worshipped

But good God, the green

Flying in from the desert, it leaps up to smother you
Like heat
You can sit still in it and hear
The ever-warbling whippoorwill
The bullfrog, the cricket
The cacophony
That makes you believe
Life does not stop at death
Some symphony
Some force,
Some work greater than mystery,
Overcomes the earth, and our dead bones

I can see it:
The earth re-claiming, without a noise
The toothpicks built upon it
Like Gulliver snapping silly cords,
The earth will pull the ramparts down
Without malice or a sound
While spirits soar and take up bodies
And walk the earth once more,
With no need for shelter

So each new pine, planted to replace the old
Is vanguard
Come to proclaim
That the dead will rise again
Even if the wait is far and tarries
Long after each of us is gone