Cursed is the Ground

Spectres squirm under me
and resound through the ground
feeding in the places
where corn stalks once grew.

A president is buried here
beneath his long name in a tall stone
twenty feet below the earth, and fifty above it,
pressing against the sun.

Burial mounds hold the ground
in the park outside town,
Imagine the valley
before wires pervaded the sky
or asphalt choked the earth. What remains
that can not be exorcised?

The sound—subterranean swelling.