The Man on the Backhoe

He lifts with a lever the tractor up off its wheels
and onto its stabilizers, turned out and planted like feet.

Together, they are braced and steady now
for the large boom of the backhoe to swing

over the hole and her, his dog of seventeen years.
His right arm moves back and forth and the bucket

hits flat and hard against the returned dirt.
Like a strange, unnamed animal, it stamps

the dirt down, down, till no air’s left,
and the earth it knew before is level again.

Mermer Blakeslee
(Heliotrope, 2004)