When I'm Gone

When I'm gone, the clouds will make way,
and I will soar between the leaves of the quaking aspens.

When I'm gone, my story will become a song,
a song that echoes from the little birds, so out of tune that everyone
stops and listens and laughs, and from the clouds I laugh along with them.

When I'm gone, the quaking aspens will shiver and the forest will breathe,
and the birds' songs will trill an few keys higher, quite the opposite of
and just like it always was.

When I'm gone, my naked body will sink into the mud, and then it will become
the tree that my descendants climb up and fall from, and climb up again.

When I'm gone, the clouds will make way,
a gateway to the light, and I will watch, until the clouds slip back together again,
and take the shape of a story, a story that my descendants
will imagine when the lay back and point up at the clouds, above the quaking aspens.

When I'm gone, the clouds make way. When they fall back together,
they will become one, a story. My story.