To a Life Well-Lived - Nov 5 2022

 

To a Life Well-Lived

Nov 5 2022

A dead body

bloated and decomposing

eventually floats,

lying half-submerged

on the ocean surface

rocking gently in the swell.

Salt water

softens the skin,

which will turn a sickly pale

be nibbled on by fish.

Scavenging birds

will circle unerringly,

taking turns

tearing at the melting flesh.

And soon, the cloying stink of death;

a mix of mothballs

rotten eggs

and bad fruit,

meat

forgotten in the car

on a sunny afternoon.

And when it sinks to the ocean floor

the stricken whale

will be a feast;

decomposing from the inside out,

carved up

by scavengers

who will consume even the bones.

Food

for those who depend on death

for survival;

the microbes

of the festering gut,

the bottom-dwellers

in the benthic desert

of permanent dark.

The Bible says

ashes to ashes and dust to dust.

Foretelling that we, too, will return;

the virtuous cycle

of life and death.

So bury me

in a thin linen shroud

beneath a fruiting tree;

deep enough

wild beasts don't dig me up,

but shallow enough

the living soil

will consume my mortal remains.

Where worm-infested apples

with soft pulpy centres

will fall.

Will be turned alcoholic

by industrious yeast.

Will brown and shrivel and slump

into fertile soil,

rotten matter

scattering hard brown seeds

that may or may not

survive the winter.

Then geminate in spring,

far enough from the mother tree

to catch the sun,

sprouting tender leaves

and sending down roots

into the rich loamy soil

where my body rests

In subterranean dark.

Hard apple cider

infusing the ground

beneath the first wet snow.

Where I'd like to imagine

raising a glass

to a life well-lived;

a nod to my survivors

a salute myself, 

the dear departed

raising a toast.

Jim Harrison has a book of poetry called Dead Man's Float. When I saw this title, I was envious (the kind of title that instantly piques your curiosity and draws you in), and immediately pictured a rather morbid forensic scenario. (Although, not having yet read the poem, it could very well be about learning to swim!)

But playing around with the idea, it only took a few lines to realize that if I wasn't more intentional, my version of this poem would quickly become a police procedural — another formulaic network drama. So then it became a dead fish, floating belly up, and then the carcass of a whale. That called to mind a sequence from David Attenborough's Blue Planet, which is when I knew I had something that would take me somewhere with more appeal and poetic possibilities than a coroner's case, mob hit, or murder mystery.

I do hope, though, that dead body in the opening stanza provides some misdirection: that the reader will immediately picture a human corpse, and certainly not a whale.

I had just finished my final proof-read of the first draft when I went back and added the closing stanza. To paraphrase Chekhov, if you introduce a gun in the 1st act, by the 2nd or 3rd it must go off. So here, where — in a spirit of mischief — I’d dropped in that incidental reference to natural fermentation, what else to do but make a final toast with it?!!