There was a time I thought I was dead.
I even convinced my friends of it.
"It's not the end of the world," I said,
"just of me, and I am at rest, finally"
And they built a long canoe
and cooked a lot of food.
My body was wrapped in a blanket,
the canoe filled with keepsakes
like photographs, inscribed books, and love letters.
My friends lowered my body
deep in the bottom of the long canoe
and pushed it off into the water.
I floated away while they drank
and sang and ate and kept on living.
Sometime in the night, I was awakened
by a thunder strike. The rain poured down,
lightning flashed, the canoe raced.
I was soaked, I was tossed;
I hung on for dear life.
That's how it was.
When day broke, there was no land in sight.
I had drifted far from the shore
in the long canoe filled with photographs,
inscribed books, and love letters, wrapped
in a blanket; my friends kept on drinking
and singing and eating and living -
And I was alive too, after all,
wrapped in a blanket,
racing along
in a long canoe,
far from the shore.
