What *do* I really want to do with my poems?

I mean, what should happen to them once their poet takes off for parts unknown?

Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash

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I’ve been writing some instructions in prose, and it’s borne in upon me once again how much easier it is to say what I want in poetry.

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ECHOES                                                                                   2025


When a poet dies, the words unsung
inside her fly away to walls of canyons,
to shores of lakes, to dizzy steeps of stairwells,
to vaulted heights of old cathedrals. Stand
still, look up, whisper her name, and hear
her poems answer, sing from every height,
from every edge and corner, whole in air —
her name, your voice, her words, old songs sung new,
held perfect in imagination’s memory
a whisper long, then flying free again.

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WHAT I REALLY WANT TO DO WITH MY POEMS          2025


Paint them on windchimes,
hang them from lampposts
and traffic lights.

Layer them like compost
at red-soil roots
of scrub oak and alder.

Steep them in tea, 
serve them with lemon
and synonym honey.

Fold them in origami
favors, for guests
at my funeral.

Sing them with my last breath,
hear that one voice 
come in on the harmony.

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The instructions I’ve been writing (on and off for a couple of years now) are about what I’d like to happen after I die — the disposition of my estate, if you want to be British-novel-ish about it. This is simply an exercise in prudence; I’m fine, if a little creaky. But I know what prudence is worth. The relative who’ll be my executor has done this once before … after his mom died, following an illness that nobody expected to be her last, leaving not a clue behind her about where anything was or what she wanted done. I’ve learned from this example, and am laying a trail of breadcrumbs so thick that I fully expect a forest of baguettes to spring up behind me.

So I’m typing away at a memorandum about the Stuff in my life, the material and intellectual property. I write about one category of Stuff after another, breathing through waves of love and sadness along the way, and then I get to “My Substack Account” … and stop cold.

What do you mean, I’m going to have to stop posting poems when I’m dead?

I can be detached about what happens to a lot of the friendly Stuff I’ve collected around me, during a quiet lifetime in a funky studio apartment. A few categories of Stuff, though, are hard to imagine letting go of. I want my poems. Yes, I want them where I’m going (and I believe I’ll find them there), and I want them to still be here, where I found them. Where you found them, and where you and I found each other.

This is not insurmountable. I’ll make a plan, and finish the memorandum, and find something more fun to write (please God). On my best days I’ll remember that my poems already have lives of their own, that some of them have relationships with their readers that I know nothing about, and that that’s what I wrote them for: not to be kept safe, not to live forever, but to be here now, bearing witness and keeping company. However long it lasts, that’s a decent life, for a poem and a poet both.