Last Rescue Mission

He decided he didn’t
Want to give his body back
To the Earth for recycling—

Didn’t want it smoke and ash,
Didn’t want to compost it.
For decades, he’d been turning

A constant churn of atoms,
From air, water, other lives,
Into his experience,

Not that it was all bad, but
Why should atoms have to go
Through all of that? The cycle

Of molecular rebirth
As more and more and more lives
Couldn’t ever be broken

By something as trivial
As one vast set of atoms
Caught up in the throes of life

Sitting down to meditate.
He couldn’t save what he’d been,
The atoms that had been him

Now back in the world again,
But the configuration
Of his molecules at death,

Those at least he could remove
From life’s conversion system,
Never to suffer again.

When he died, at some expense,
His last will and testament
Ordered lucite and cement.