Bury me amongst the trees
Where redwoods overlook the sea
From atop a crossed mountain
Where my body will quicken
From flesh into sand.
Underneath the needle-bed
Blanket, the fibers of my hair weave
A way through the wind-filled leaves.
Heat my voice with borrowed sun
Which once kissed my cheeks
Where freckles reached to meet.
You now hear my broken chords
Faintly in the the distance unmoored
Tasting the salted shore. Safely clean
I lay down on a million fine grains of sand
Not feeling myself again I repeat
To no one: I am an empty vessel.
I’ll still wake every morning
Habitually, my hands still sleep
Parting the fitted sheets aways,
Long gone I still reach after you.
I am the water, then the dew
Maturing into a pinguid mist.
The palms clap and sway to
Conduct the band at noon
To play a song of our bequest.
The hour’s imminent.
Time to ride a wicked dream on
A silk weaved carpet twisted
With last night’s ghostly breath.
Come take inventory of my remains
Should the tree mark me no more.
The lumber that’s become of me
Taken over by the shore. I am a house
Now – shelter for a family to whom you
Lost me once again. My soul holds up
The walls now, my legs hammered
Into floorboards, arms encircle
Each bedroom where the dormers rest.
My fingers lace together to build
A painted white front porch,
That’s my hips now a swing
Hung there, under the eaves.
Look up to see my head holds high
A roof; my back’s now the front door
My eyes frame All the windows, my heart beats
In the kitchen. My birds left the
Forest knowing where my mouth now sings
And the woodpecker that lived inside my trunk
Hollowed out my attic in the spring.
Let me stand strong and steady
For at least a hundred years.
By then, long gone, you built your own
And our lives live on, unworldly yet eternally.
Looking down at the rubble of what’s
Left of my body in the demolition heap.
What at all might grow from me who once
You buried underneath a tree?
Let me now burn someone’s hands
Someone lit afire from my plight.
It’s cold outside where I once stood
In the trees and dark of night
And I’ll burn vast and luminous
My spirit gives newborn light.
