They cut a rectangle in the Earth,
a final harbor for your empty ship,
then poured in dirt above to fill
its windless sails, secured and still.
For we captains do not descend nobly
astern our mortal barks until the end:
but rather leave them on eternal shores,
step lightly on a sandy beach, and pass
on to weightier things. In time, the sea
reclaims these hulls and sails; cells
and molecules we borrowed here
rejoin the planet and her living rhythms,
perhaps to bear another sailor on this sea.
Who knows? My body might possess
atoms that served better men, or worse;
they haven’t any use for these parts now.
In sacred silence I imagine you, unbodied,
pausing at new Eden’s thick tree line
while your ship, now cast adrift,
settles down into its final berth.
Farewell, for now; for I intend to follow
and seek you out along that shore
once Heaven’s tasks for me are done
and its winds propel my ship no more.
September 2019
