I do not dread the accidental deletion,
for scraps of my being are eternal.
Paper rots, burns, mulches or recycles,
but photocopies and reprintings sprout.
Inadvertently scrubbed emails survive
for ages in the cluttered files of receivers.
Self-posed audio and video lurk 	
globally on websites and computers.
But I do sometimes worry that if I
were ever pastiched back together
it would create a gargoyle caricature
of vanity, self- adulation and inanity.
                        

My interest and concentration
at seven was more or less an hour
and about once a summer week
I’d use that hour combing beaches
in Michigan for Petoskey stones

They could always be found,
for every winter the ice plowed
the shore ground and let loose
flattish stones and pebbles
that once had been rugose coral.

Easy to find when wetted,
almost indistinguishable when dry,
the stone skeletons of very old life
were gathered into children’s piles
or lacquered and sold to tourists

I collected pounds of pailed stone,
half hidden in the corner of a garage.
Years later, once I’d tardily returned
the rocks were gone, none admitting where.
I want my Petoskey stones back.
                        

A harsh disappointment
I now have about myself
is no longer being able
to indulge the fantasies
that preoccupied my life.

I don’t drink or smoke or gamble;
don’t much brag or gossip or lie;
almost don’t cheat on taxes;
can’t ramp up to any kind of excess
without expedited suffering.

I want the wanna-be wanton 
I always thought I could be
to come back for a visit;
a four-course Saturday night frolic
without Sunday morning indigestion.

*This ancient plant was once used in medieval Scotland as an appetite 
suppressant by boiling and eating the tubers during periods of famine.