My Coffin

My coffin will be filled with books—
poems, novels, a history of wars
that never ended.

And there will be
wide-ruled notebooks,
cheap pens but lots of them.

Somewhere under all this,
I am ready for the journey,
where, for how long,

I don’t know.  But just in case
I find a cell, a cave 
with enough light to see by,

I will start over,
read, write, revise
until I almost get it right.

No bones or dust, 
my coffin will be filled
with words lighter 

than stones, dirt packed
by a gravedigger’s hand,
the last marble word.