Reincarnation

This is a poem read at Rhythms Of The World at the weekend, by a crazy old couple from the southern states.  It made me laugh (and the others in the audience).

It's by Wallace McRae...

"What does reincarnation mean?" a cowpoke asked his friend.


His pal replied, "It happens when yer life has reached it's end.


They comb yer hair and wash yer neck and clean yer fingernails,

And lay you in a padded box away from life's travails.

The box and you goes in a hole, that's been dug into the ground.

Reincarnation starts in when you're planted 'neath the mound.


Them clods melt down, just like your box and you who is inside,

And then you're just beginnin' on yer tranformation ride.

In a while the grass will grow upon yer rendered mound.

Till some day on yer rendered grave a lonely flower is found.


And say a horse should wander by and gaze upon that flower


That once was you, but now's become yer vegetated bower.

The posey that the horse ate up, with his other feed,

Makes bone and fat and muscle, essential to the steed.


But some is left that he can't use and so it passes through,

And finally lays upon the ground, this thing that once was you.

Then say by chance, I wanders by and sees this on the ground

And I ponders and wonders at this object that I found.

I thinks of reincarnation of life, and death, and such

And comes away concluding: Slim, you ain't changed, all that much."