The headstone tilting, after the gale,
and the old guy struggling with it, trying
to straighten it, tamp earth around it.
There’d been frost for days, after the storm,
there was no give in the ground.
 
You need to be tactful. I just asked,
“Can I steady this end?” He nodded.
“Cheers, boy.” (I’m near to sixty now.
I asked about him later, in the village pub.
He was a gravedigger once, local strong-man
type of character, famous arm-wrestler.)
 
We pushed and steadied, bent and tamped.
It would hold for now. I glimpsed the inscription,
In fond and loving memory
of Edith somebody (Williams, I think)
1934 to 2012
and a space left clear beneath.
 
Once we were done, he got his breath, nodded, 
puffed again and said, “Appreciate it.”
I left him, the sun emerging now,
a brightness on the frost and the morning,
and him there, standing before
his tall, proud stone.