The Canonization

no man convinced he was going to die

    on an island would on an island live

unless he wanted to die

    on that island & i did

talk about an end rhyme

    but my life’s a poem my death’s

been writing for a long time

& death abhors a well-wrought urn

i’m done

& they will burn me where i fall

    the aspen clapping ashes

against the sky’s blue wall

    & they can burn these verses

too send us all to naught

let them revel in the smoke

    let death upon my life

& life’s work choke

i’m done

i leave death to work what urn

it will

my father was a sack

of ash my mother kept

    on a windowsill for years after he passed

    it didn’t seem to cause him much distress

        i left him on the island

    when i left