April 2021
Author's Note: This poem is part of my ongoing (and doomed) crusade against the
whole concept of death. As Edna St. Vincent Millay once so eloquently put it: "I am not resigned.”
Posthumous Instructions
After the fire, when I am rattling in my urn
and have no more to say to you, go home.
Have lunch. Ignore me, while I try to learn
the etiquette of ash and clinkerdom.
Let me settle. Let me reconcile
my boundaries with the cold geometry
of this strange vessel— my new domicile
whose curving contours reconfigure me.
Let me liberate the elements
that fused in me the morning I was formed
and offer them again, as evidence
that my short visit left this place unharmed.
Help me be part of what the earth reclaims
when you return to scatter my remains.
©2021 Marilyn Taylor
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