Burials of dress shoes and belly button moon. 

Someone mows the lawn of the graveyard
on the hill.
the graveyard where you can watch 
the moon like the belly-button of the night sky--
protruding outward warm and uncomfortable--
and we touch it.
the graveyard near the old movie theater
who still has red curtains to close.
the graveyard we sleep under when it's cold and
there's no mattresses left on bunk beds.

It's an art-- not a skill.
not any person can mow the lawn of a cemetery.
he tends the bushes into femurs-- writes
his name in the pulsing soil of a fresh grave
only to erase it with his bare foot.
he doesn't wear shoes out of superstition.
he says only dead people want shoes
because to the best of his knowledge 
every ghost that he has worked with 
has been barefoot or empty
from the waist down.

it's a disguise really.
death smells his earth and grass
caked toes and sighs and moves 
on-- besides-- who would tend 
the cemetery then?
he buried his only pair
of shoes at the far corners of the
graveyard. Separated of course.
One on each parameter. Penny loafers
from his first communion. 

it is tiring job to learn
the schedule of the residents
so as to not to disturb the breakfast
and hazelnut coffee of the families
still bickering in the mausoleums
and so as to not seem irreverent for the ghosts
sulking over their fresh graves--
they try to dig up their own bodies
and he turns off the weed wacker and
sits besides them

he says, "they'll bring flowers--
for a few years and then forget."
and it's not comforting at all
but it's what they need to hear.
ghosts like the truth.

he imagines he could plant a patch of mums
on the fresh rectangles where
bodies have just been planted
the same as penny loafers.
but he worries it would give them
false hope
and he never trusted mums or marigolds
for the matter--
unknown to most of the population
only ghosts can plant mums and marigolds--
living people only think they do.

there not many perks to mowing the
lawn at the cemetery. he smells too
much like death and ghosts and fog
to fall in love and most bars and restaurants
have a strict "no shoes, no shirt, no
service policy". 

he goes to the movies alone
it's too dark to see his bare feet--
and he eats the stale popcorn for supper
and leaves before the ending
he always leaves before the ending
or else the grass would grow too
tall in his absence.

he is the only acceptation to visitation hours.
DAWN TO DUSK and if you look
in small print every sign for
every cemetery read "unless you
are the man who mows the lawn here."
he watches the sun set-- sitting
on a tomb stone-- lawn mower running--
fist fulls of stale popcorn.

"Do you still see the moon?"
he asks the ghosts.
"Like a belly button?"
they respond.
"Yes", he says.
"Yes", they say.
and he goes to sleep on
the warm pulsing earth.

His dreams are about only shoes
and fears about the day when he'll 
forget about death because it
will be so mundane. 
he knows one day he'll accidentally dig up
the penny loafers from
his first communion
put them on.
fall in love.
bury himself.
and mums will grow there.