The day I dug the hole
was laborious and solemn,
unkempt hair wild in the rain
with cakey mud and deep
it went down, down, down
only a pinhole of light at the top
and then I threw in the body
and left.

I came back in four years
gallivantin’ on the baked dust plain
and there were rocks sittin’ in that place
circling up a roped bucket that ran down
to the water that the people all drank
and I wondered about bacteria and death
and e. coli blackness and pissed-off cows
or whatever you call it
and out walked that side of the road dead man
from a whirlwind tepee
still wearing that canvass suit that
married us in madness that muddy night
and pointed at me and yelled to the people
who pinched my arms and drug me to the well
where that stranger I knew so well
watched me enter that pinhole headfirst
to cleanse myself in the muddy wallow of Karma.