Last Wishes
From the white void
hiding the sea,
familiar foghorns roll.
Why are they so worried?
There's no better way to be buried.
When it's my turn, wrap
my failed body in linen straps,
between the loops slip
skipping stones for weight.
Send me down the thermoclines
with silver dollars on my eyes,
watch me become a brightness,
shrinking and fading
as I sink. I'll take
my Thieves' Communion with the crabs, bless them. Let my meat repay the sea for meat I've taken out with line, with net and trap.
No doubt, the dogfish
will find me and weasel
their fill from the loosening linen,
but bless them too. If I leave
debts behind,
and nothing in the till
to make them good, don't pay the banks.
No, pay them, if you like,
it's no concern of mine. By then
my only business will be
with sharks and crabs
and worms, the ocean's undertakers,
among bottles and sunken
deadheads from which fishhooks
float translucent lines.
Daniel Cowper's poems and critical writings have appeared in various publications in the USA, Ireland and his native Canada, including Arc Poetry, Barren, Southword, Vallum, and Prairie Fire. In 2017 he was long-listed for the CBC Poetry Prize, and a chapbook of poems, The God of Doors, was published by Frog Hollow Press as the winner of its chapbook manuscript contest. A collection entitled Grotesque Tenderness was published in 2019 by McGill-Queen's University Press.
Comments