Weekly Poem: 'Hole'

**By Naomi Ayala** One morning they dig up the sidewalk and leave No sign of the truck only the large dark shadow digging and digging piling up sludge with a hand shovel beside the only tree Two o'clock I come by and he's slumbering in the grass beside rat holes Three and he's stretched across a jagged stone wall folded hands tucked beneath one ear a beautiful young boy smiling not the heavy large shadow who can't breathe Four-thirty and the August heat takes one down here He's pulled up an elbow joint some three feet round At seven I head home for the night pass the fresh gravel mound a soft footprint near the manhole like the "x" abuelo would place beside his name all the years he couldn't write   "Hole" is from "Naomi Ayala":http://www.curbstone.org/authdetail.cfm?AuthID=57's collection, "This Side of Early" (Curbstone Press, 2008). Her first collection, "Wild Animals on the Moon," was published in 1997 by Curbstone Press. Her third collection is forthcoming from Bilingual Review Press. Ayala lives in Washington, D.C., and works as an education consultant, translator and teacher. Ayala's poem is also included in the "Poetry Foundation's DC Poetry Tour":http://www.poetryfoundation.org/gallery/walking-tours, a multimedia tour that reveals our nation's capital through the eyes of its great poets. From the halls of the federal buildings to neighborhood side streets, the tour features poems written in and about Washington, D.C., as well as photographs by poet Thomas Sayers Ellis. The tour can be taken online or downloaded at "www.poetryfoundation.org/gallery/walking-tours":http://www.poetryfoundation.org/gallery/walking-tours, and is available for download via iTunes. (Disclosure: The Poetry Foundation also funds the NewsHour's poetry coverage.)