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Reincarnation
Upon the news that Washington state passed a bill to allow the composting of human remains this poem came to mind:
Reincarnation, by Wally McRae
“What does Reincarnation mean?”
A cowpoke asked his friend.
His pal replied, “It happens when
Yer life has reached its end.
They comb yer hair, and warsh 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
Yore planted ‘neath a mound.
Them clods melt down, just like yer box,
And you who is inside.
And then yore just beginnin’ on
Yer transformation ride.”“In a while, the grass’ll grow
Upon yer rendered mound.
Till some day on yer moldered grave
A lonely flower is found.
And say a hoss should wander by
And graze upon this flower
That once wuz you, but now’s become
Yer vegetative bower.”“The posy that the hoss done 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 wuz you.”“Then say, by chance, I wanders by
And sees this upon the ground,
And I ponders, and I wonders at,
This object that I found.
I thinks of reincarnation,
Of life and death, and such,
And come away concludin’: Slim,
You ain’t changed, all that much.”
McRae lives in Rosebud, Montana. After Baxter Black, he is probably America’s best-known cowboy poet.
Published in General
Love it!
Good one.
“All go to one place. All are from the dust, and to dust all return.” Ecclesiastes 3:20
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Soylent Green anyone?
Mr. Hageman, that’s a really good, and really funny, poem. Thanks for calling it to our minds.
Delightful!
Reincarnation is when you die and come back as a can of condensed milk from contented cows.
I thought that was reincanation.
Reincondensation.
Ha ha.
Oh, Lord. Does that joke really have to be explained?
Moooving on.
No.
But perhaps the follow ups to it do?
Well. The only thing I can come up with that is remotely relevant is the English Folk Song, On Ilkley Moor Baht ‘At. In which a Yorkshire man (think James Herriot country) who’s been walking on Ilkley Moor, courting his girlfriend (Mary Jane) without a hat, in the cold wind, is told that doing so will lead to a likely death and burial, and then to his corpse being eaten by worms, which will then be eaten by ducks, which ducks will then be eaten by people, at which point, “then we shall all have eaten thee.”
It’s a very well known pub song in the UK (the anthem of Yorkshire, some say), and it just might be that I’ve never been prouder of my granddaughter than when, at the age of about six, at an appropriate moment in some conversation or other, she launched into it, Yorkshire dialect and all.
Granny did her job, is what I think.
Rein-Carnation . . .
Is Wally McRae one of the cowboy poets Harry Reid saved?
He participates in the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering in Elko, so I’m sure he has been the beneficiary of Harry’s and our largesse.