My family owns some rocks

and the holes underneath them,

dug by the same old man

over the last sixty years, up

just north of Bellefontaine —

Pronounced ‘bell fountain’ —

and downhill from the lake we were

all born to swim in, drinking

almost as much as the whole thing’s

Mass capacity, in the high tide

of summer vacations and growing old

beside six sets of cousins, all at one time

removed and yet returned to be

sitting together while the old man’s trembling

Hands, wracked from years of amber poison,

chisel some names, dates, and sad old

sympathies every time another dies.

And the same hands start the elevator

that Charons the casket down

and over the inky black Styx.

Perseus and his pals found a way

back out, but she still hasn’t, and it’s

been years. Memories will

always get grayer with age, like my

grandfather’s hair, or my hopes for

ever getting another one to come home,

so that they can say goodbye to all the

dead that they have missed, and who have

missed them since taking off to another county

and leaving this one behind, for what we all suppose

to be better, less subterranean obsessions.