DEATH Poem: Dirt, by Johanna Mitchell

We buried our Siamese this evening – found dead in the neighbor’s yard.
No idea what happened.
So hard to imagine my own body buried in the dirt.
He was stiff and heavy.
Life all gone.
It is so strange and surreal.

We threw white petaled flowers on his body.
He took no notice.
The dirt fell around his head and between his legs.
His big, soft, brown paw lay with toes curled as if to nurse the air while purring.
Sharp claws poking out like daggers once used for scratching trees and hunting lizards.
The lizards are now dirt.

We planted a fragrant lavender plant above him.
Its scent made its way to me, sweet and soothing, from the ground where its violet flowers
rise above him and its roots reach down to his rotting flesh.
The putrid smell, smothered in soil, lurking deep down in the earth.
The lavender and the Siamese will become dirt.

We walk on this earth, the dirt, the grass, the concrete; minds full of senseless longings,
careless judgments, meaningless noise – I’m right or you’re wrong, he said this or she did
that, or fantasies about the future and grandeur.
It will all become dirt, eventually.

I hope one day my body will lay in the dirt beneath a beautiful tree.
My body and all its parts transformed – nourishment for the trunk, the branches, and the
leaves.
Then carried away by birds in the bellies of bugs.