Like a good elder

I ‘ve been reviewing my final plans

Not for a European trip or a big family gathering

No instead, final plans for my death.  

By the way, just for the record

I hate the way our language dodges talking about death

As if it were contagious or the words carried evil spells.

For example, I despise the term pre-deceased. 

Aren’t we this very minute, all of us pre-deceased?

So,  my final plans.

After I get rid of my worldly possessions

I need to attend to my final disposal. 

What to do with me?

I’m thinking of maybe donating my body to the local medical school.

And my brain to the College Arts and Sciences at the local university

I’m hoping they can find a poet to do a humanities autopsy 

That would reveal if all the poetry and the beautiful things I’ve seen and read,

Has fashioned a brain worth passing along.

No coffin or burial for me. No cemetery.

Except that I would love to have a headstone that reads

Current resident.

And no cremation, either. That’s way too energy intensive. 

Hell, I don’t even like fireplaces.

No human composting. 

I’m way too full of microplastics and forever chemicals. 

Planting me in the ground under a magnificent oak tree 

In a beautiful national forest is just not fair to the worms and the bacteria

That work the earth to keep those forests healthy.

Nope none of that.

So, I’ve finally settled on being a ghost that inhabits Narragansett Beach. 

I’ll join all the other ghosts I met there for the decades.

Dottie, that 85-year-old woman, now three years dead who used to racewalk the beach.

Arms pumping, stopping for a round of push-ups to show off her good health.

And, Bill, ten years gone, hunting for sea glass and taking care of his wife 

Suffering from a wretched disease.

He hoped he could bring her to the beach one last time before she passed away.

And Kenneth, who sat cross-legged in a yoga pose while the fraternity boys played football around him — never breaking his meditative state. He died just this year.

And that ghost of a house that sat up on the dune

Washed away by a winter storm

Was that two years ago now?

I’ll stand there up on that little rise and watch the beach walkers and join them

As my dead father and my dead mother and my best friend the dead poet 

have walked with me any thoughts all these years.

I’ll rescue some toddlers who’ve gone rushing into the waves

Just out of the parents’ careful watch

And whisk the sand from their eyes.  

And help the elderly steady themselves in the waves feeling 

that lovely cool water around their ankles. 

Maybe for the last time

Remembering all those summers before. 

Their lovers and children and grandchildren – all of them happy and laughing.

And I’ll point out the treasure in every sunrise and sunset

Those who are moving too fast, deep in thought on the beach.

Eyes cast down, heart heavy.

I could all this from my watchtower in heaven

But I’m just not ready to leave.

I’m comfortable and a comfort to other ghosts. 

None of us is really ready to go.