When I die
Please reincarnate me in the #Winds.
You’ll have options.
You can lash me to a horse (head up please so I can bask in the sun)
And take me to 9,000 feet,
Where the nutcrackers mock and insult, looping from tree to tree,
And bury me under a whitebark pine
So the molecules of my rotting body inch upward
Into its boughs and branches,
Into the seeds of its sticky red cones,
Plucked out by nutcrackers and buried back in the duff
To become more whitebark.
I would like to be a forest forever. You can do this.
Please.
If a horse is too expensive or problematic you could quarter me,
And four of you, my mountain siblings, can each carry a piece,
45 pounds to a quarter if I lose a few pounds.
I hope you smoke, laugh, mock, and insult me
On the trail to Island Lake
Or the tarns above New Fork Canyon (probably better, fewer people)
To emancipate my molecules
Under a stand of receptive saplings.
If you can’t find adequate soil,
Please give me a sky burial.
Lug my corpse to a lonely cirque of soaring points,
White ice smeared on gray walls,
And chop me up,
(Or don’t, if that disgusts you but the Tibetans do it so it must help)
Spreading me like a picnic across a granite slab,
So all the beasts and birds might partake,
My atoms absorbed and distributed
By a hundred generations of coyote, bear, eagle, and buzzard,
Some lucky molecules expelled by a crow the very next day,
Lacquering a needle at the crest of the virginal, ancient Winds
With all the views of the world below
And all the time to enjoy them.
Please don’t cremate me and throw me in the air.
I know it’s more convenient for mountaintop goodbyes,
But what a waste of infinitely reincarnatable molecules.
I would like to live in the Winds forever.
Shouldn’t take more than a long weekend.
A horse or two will definitely help.
Thank you.