When my call to eternity has come,
do not linger over my passing;
but bury me
In the quick of dawn
With a choir of bird song and a short amen;
For I am departed
And what is left of me is of no essence,
Like the dregs in a coffee pot,
Let me pass in the brightness of morning
Lest the sad evening chorus
Of cricket cries
Disturb my final sleep.
My death has been
The end and the renewal of my birth;
And the jetsam of the stream of life
waits to crumble into nothingness.
So bury me deep and quick
With but a rose to mark the stillness
of my blood
and the dead fragrance of my memory.
do not linger then too long with me
Lest the sweetness of my living decay
in your hearts.
my epitaph is already writ
in the pages of my past.
© Alick Lazare- Nature Island Verses (2001)