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.