After “Ian Boyden’s Bear Dream Bird Dream” by Paul E Nelson

How do children dance

to the sound of your name?

Puppies, kids, kittens,

lambs on their sacrificial

stones? If stocked

carp are visiting

immortals,

what about Turi-

topsis dohrnii?

If we could fool our

selves for long enough

to ask the immortals

for a moment or for paradise

would they pick a cruel moment

or send us to purgatorio

to watch humanities blooper reel?

They laugh hardest

at the moment

we built a hut

and thought we had

left them behind,

in reality, it was paradise.

Typical human, dreaming

of bears and birds and

insects (bees, honey, and sex).

Places are our makers

(Chinook, coho, etc… swim

upstream)

So when I die, bury me

in the womb

bury me in paraíso

bury me in purgatorio

(we die as we live

cursed by ancestors’

mistakes)

bury me on Saturn

(can I be buried under gasses?

or float in a ring like a merry go round amidst sacrificial space rocks)

bury me under a tree

where children can dance

with my bones