—for Beo

When I die
and they in somber suits
come with the odd, finite desire
to assign all that is human
and thereby unfathomable
to the knowability of numbers—
a series of three for the weight of my bones 
and all they’ve carried;
two flimsy characters for the infinity 
of breaths, the universe of dreams…

Ask them, instead, to record my age,
not in the empty, black-and-white shoebox
of two dead and finished numbers,
but in hieroglyphs of the sea,
in pints of good, aromatic vanilla,
in rafts of prehistoric, croaking pelicans,
in oaken barrels of dark, red wine,
in casks of salt crystals,
in sacks of nutmeg
and an alphabetic strand of loves
like prayer flags as colored and scented
as a summer market: orange peel,
blue hydrangeas, a forest of rosemary.

Ask them, instead, to record my weight
in the silver and aquamarine scales of fish
I’ve watched while dangling by one inhalation
in warm, briny water,
in the insouciant chimes of the grackle,
in the billowing of birds’ wings
taking flight in a sweet, yellow cloud.
For what are we, really, coming into this world
or leaving it,
but shaking, new-formed poems
feeling our way across the surface 
in the green eyes of an eel,  
the tulle grace of a heron?

And, if you can, let them record my last words,
not as some parched request for water, or for more time,
but in the gold of the sun inked in warbled skeins
through layers of clear, turquoise sea,
tracing the ever-changing who of me
onto clean, white sand, to be crossed,
and crossed again, by tiny, gossamer fish,  
seeking, before the tide draws out,
a final bite of something sweet.