Death and After

By David M. Harris

According to my Baptist neighbors,

I am docketed for torture from my demise

until the heat death of the universe.

If I believe them, I might as well stay alive 

just as long as I can manage, 

but life has compensations too,

friends and fresh mangoes, love and the ends

of stories, which I would miss, being dead.

My friend Val believes I’ll be able to listen

as the stories continue, but I don’t believe her,

either. I won’t exactly miss anything. I won’t

do anything, not even molder. I’ve left instructions

to work my ashes into the garden. The end,

in my personal faith, is the end.

That’s a hard choice for some people

to accept, that their stories will stop.

How could the universe go on

without them? But it will and it does,

no matter what we want.

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Until 2003, David M. Harris had never lived more than fifty miles from New York City. Since then he has moved to Tennessee, acquired a daughter and a classic MG, and gotten serious about poetry.  His work has appeared in Pirene's Fountain (and in First Water, the Best of Pirene's Fountain anthology), Gargoyle, The Labletter, The Pedestal, and other places. His first collection of poetry, The Review Mirror, was published by Unsolicited Press in 2013.