The Hair of the Dead Still Grows in the Grave

The children discover this written in an old science textbook,
and to the cemetery they go, down the dirt road overgrown

with wild pink roses tangling the ditches
and climbing through the windows of emptied houses.

Thrown over their shoulders are shovels, spades and sharpshooters.
What if the dead women have hair to their ankles? asks one.

What if we can sell it a wig-maker? says another.
It’s probably lost all its color. Who wants a wig of witches’ hair anyway?

Crossing a slatted, sideless bridge they eye the wild manes of algae
combed by creek water.

The cemetery is a wilderness of hackberry and Osage orange, a possum
hurrying from the road’s margin to crash in underbrush.

They dig all morning and on past afternoon. At five feet
one’s spade turns up splinters of rotted wood, husks of bone

patterned inside like the capillaries of a dried leaf. One
turns up the dull thread of a fine silver neckless, flings it into the air,

and the others jump back, shrieking Don’t touch it,
it might be cursed. One lies in the bough of an Osage orange’s arched branch

watching for the ghost emerging from its grave. One runs her finger
over the strange language of prayer books

written on the pitted stones. One touches the strand of chain
hidden in her pocket as they walk home.

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