© 2007 mykl g. sivak

Ceremony Coleoptera

When I die do not bury me.
Find a green New England hillock,
summer pasture knoll, grassy cap
of hill and valley ritual transhumance;

place my body there—
within a box of boards hewn
from wind-felled spruce or hemlock;
scatter beetles upon my body--

Silphidae, Cleridae, Dermestidae,
Bacon Beetle, Carrion, Ham, Necrobia—
that they may lay their eggs
within my antecedent form,

hatch to broods of hungry grubs
to feast upon the flesh, molt,
pass through stages, mate within,
pass eggs and on and on.

Let this continue,
for as many generations
necessary to pick
my skeleton clean.

And in some blue afternoon,
when bones are spotless bare—
white bright as leather elytra
of some undiscovered scarab—

with bare cupped palms scoop
living beetles, toss them to flight,
listen to wings’ flitter, watch
as motion moves to nothingness.

Set them flying to cross
old America haphazard,
above Adirondacks, Great Mohegan,
Paumanok, Housatonic, Kittatinny;

their myriad numbers
slow-thinned to almost nothing
by appetites ave and amphibian;

feed the beasts of city and wild,
fuel the sound of Animal America
that echoes in the day and dusk,
singing untranslatable
the essence of my flesh.