The granite angel and the cast-iron fence
Share that neglect of death they would atone.
This gate, though it sequester decades hence
A chatelaine still wearing veils of stone,
Cannot ward off at last the toppling doom
Of seedlings rooted at her earthbound feet.
Now, young pines scent my grave with narrow bloom,
Spiced with the wood it yields. I find it sweet,
For all that I preferred to trees alone
A smell of saw-mill smoke and turpentine,
The sawdust pile afire deep in its cone.
Sawdust and lumber, blood and yellow bone
That were my life, inherit from the pine,
When fires are gone, a fire, a breath not mine.
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