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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.’”

    © Wallace McRae