When my body has ceased to be
What it is now or will become,
And my hair is smoke-grey
(Drier than kindling),
Send me out on a funeral pyre
To those amber-hued fields
Where a rolling tempest of
Hollowed cornhusks
(Golden skeletons waving in the wind)
Will greet me
And wrap me in their stalky arms.

That crisp bonfire smell
Will permeate the air,
And the ashes will kiss the earth,
Before digging their way into the soil—
A homecoming
That will enrich all that will grow there.

Oh yes, send me back to the plains
That I love,
The land that my body responds to—
Seeming to widen the expanse of my existence
When my feet are firmly planted on its ground.
It sounds whispers of recognition in the crevices of me.
I know this place!

Perhaps the mist of my soul will rise up to the
Existential heavens to meet my faceless maker—
Like steam off the awakening fields,
But my body
(A hollowed husk)
Will be buried in the truest church I have ever known,
And I will dig my way into the soil—
A homecoming.