PERMINERALIZATION
I wonder who, what, will be my avatars in the not-so-distant future
(what can two decades mean in the history of the human race?): to begin with, past
the expiration date, the mourning and cremation, the gray ashes percolating
through the cracked china of the urn (I´ll ask my children not to buy one of
those horrendous, indestructible
bronze-lined ones) unto the air and into the soil, from where the grass
will grow, which in due time will be voraciously eaten by cows, horses and
sheep; the worms, after doing their soil-permeating job will come out to be pecked by Robins and
Sterlings, among other sweet birds, among the blooms, mostly yellow and white,
and under the shade of the majestic oak
whose hard fruit feed the squirrels and its hardwood trunk shelters Woodpeckers
and Warblers – but let me not digress: after all these versions of myself, or
at least parts of what was ¨me¨, after another thousand years, I shall become
the minerals that ever so slowly will
have been replacing the organic material
that was, so that one good morning I shall wake up as a piece of silicate, such
as quartz, and look up in that petrified condition (and smile, a stony
smile) to the Sun, if Sun there is still! And possibly to the
little boy or girl who, another of my
avatars, will pick me up.
- June
29, 2012
