Departure Melodious

Painting by Sir Frank Dicksee

Departure Melodious

Funerals are for the living,
even those first ones where
we were thrown naked
into a shallow pit
and olive branches sufficed
for mantle.

I favor cremation
and must have been embraced
by furious flames many times
in Viking craft
and Buddhist bundles,
giving me the appetite
for swallowing fire.

Although there was something
to be said for the Apache
graveyards, perching us high
overhead in loving trees
as fodder for magpies and ravens,
rejecting the dirt; sustenance
for worms and rodents.

For many of us
our departed shell of flesh,
bone and carbon returns
to its mother earth
to be wept over
and be picked over
by scavengers of all kinds,
part of the great rhythm,
the natural conclusion--
first the feeder
then the food,
as the cycle continues;
absolute proof for me
that no one will ever
find the bones or body
of cousin Sasquatch.

Glenn Buttkus October 2010

Listed as #73 in Magpie Tales 34