Last Rites

When I am dead, let my body rest for three days.
Do not gather around me, weeping,
gnashing your teeth and sighing, to pull my soul back 
into its forsaken bag of bones.

Read to me from the Book of the Dead.
Tell me not to fear the demons, the green woman
with a birds face, or the hungry ghosts on the yellow path.
Remind me they are merely the play of my own mind.

On the fourth day, when I am placed upon the movable
tray before the doors to the great fire,
take off my ring, the gold band with one diamond
and the pink and green leaves.  Wear it.

When you are handed the carton of dust and bone,
do not buy a porcelain urn.  Instead sprinkle me high up
in the Cuyamaca mountains, under the spindly
branches of a scrub oak.

Look for me when you too cross over.  I will be waiting
just beyond the luminous tunnel, wearing bluejeans,
my purple shirt, heavy shoes-frantic to tell you
about the next implausible realm.


 

© Jan Lee Ande