Photo by Akhilesh Sharma on Unsplash
Glass Coffin
I’m not going to be famous,
but my kids might remember me.
Perhaps I’ll have the luck
to kiss a child and be forgotten,
a lingering creation left upon the earth,
consumed by a mad dash to replace us all.
Billions of bodies laid to rest, the greatest
monarchs lost except in the minds
of only the most dedicated professors.
What might I give
for a fossil footprint secure in the desert
or a stretch of tar sand to hold me for infinity?
When I die, I want to be dressed in jewels,
a beaded cloak, surrounded by pottery
and dried petals, sealed in stone
to be found in a thousand years.
Who is this king someone will ask,
careful to remove my bones from the crust,
wipe each carpal with a horsehair brush.
They will parade me around some future museum.
Kids will point and leave fingerprints on glass.
They’ll give me a spotlight, a new name,
something that ends in capitalized Man.
My bones will rhyme with myth and slow
dance amid the frozen mammoths. Let it be
a resting place to see yourself in my conserved decay.
See You at the Air Down
Before you drive along the beach,
the rule is you must air down,
drop the tire atmosphere to fifteen pounds,
float above the sand to a place where waves
and savage white caps loosen the striving.
Where seals peek above the crab lands,
where a seagull surveys a wide domain. She nods
to you with a side-eye, her newest vassal
in a quartz kingdom. We will leave this place—
crouch low with gritty feet to pump air
back into four tires, raise our heads
a little higher in the setting sun,
count the climbing numbers, strap ourselves
down, leave a feathered queen standing
on the beach to witness another turning
of the tide, to attack a crab with claws
raised in futile protection
from salty days that turn us into feast.