On living and dying

When I die, let me lie down in the forest

Let the wild animals gnaw on my bones

Let the tiny animalcules burrow into this flesh, putrefying and liquidizing

Until my cells become elements

And my flesh is earth and air

And life reconstructs those components into something newly alive.

 

When I die my body is dead, is no more

and my consciousness is also no more

released away as a product of living tissue to become a part of the ineffable

the universe first of thought, memories and feelings of others

And later just a turn of the head or shape of an eye in my children’s children’s children.

 

Blessed is my life

My living body, my living self

Blessed is me, the “I” that I experience as a blade of grass, full of myself,

full of belief in my own individuality importance specialness.

I am an expression of my Mother

This planet who birthed us all

Gave rise to our species and is even now modifying and allowing us to modify ourselves and her

a member of this tribe of grasses

mere tubule of intake and output which has somehow developed sentience

And thus believes, each of us, that we are enormously important in the vastness of the universe.

And maybe we are.