Reincarnation poem

[pnutts]

Finally found it online- although I am wondering if he re-edited it- since I thought he said 'Heck-you ain't changed, all that much'. Current source online is from 1992 -however I originally got it from winter 1984 issue of the Mother Earth News ( am positive about that because I found a partial post of mine from 2000 stating such ( when I still had that magazine ). May still have a copy of poem on a disk somewhere.

 

Reincarnation

    "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.'"

© by Wallace McRae;  Winter 1984 Mother Earth News; reprinted in Cowboy Curmudgeon (1992)
http://www.cowboypoetry.com/mcrae.htm