It’s legal now in New York to compost bodies—

to return each atom to the earth

on beds of sawdust and alfalfa,

where microbes, fertile with purpose,

unravel them to the bone,

make them silt, clay, peat, or loam;

they will nourish beetles and worms,

hibiscus, bougainvillea, royal poinciana;

they’ll regrow forests of sequoias 

and cherry blossoms; they will flourish 

and perhaps discover how God decided 

which millipede would receive ocelli

and which, eyeless, would bioluminesce 

beneath soil, unable to perceive 

in the damp dark its own brilliance.