The future

 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