I don’t want to navigate a new coast,
join any navy or see lakes and rivers

rise and join. I don’t want to spin
in the whirlpool’s vortex until my skin

and bones are mud and leaves. Let me not
fade like the spines of books nor shatter

like a glass of water rattled off the table
by an earthquake. Don’t let the crabs

and eels pick me clean until no memory
of fat or muscle clings to my architecture.

I want to be the last scared generation,
give birth to the first sacred generation.

Let the weather rage, loud and improbable,
over a landscape written in green and blue

crosshatched on fields of yellow. May my eyes
see acutely, and my hands hold firm

on the tools I’ve chosen. Let me die
in the sun-green heart of a forest.

I don’t want to die in the dark.
I don’t want to die in the ocean.