"Forensic scientists in Tennessee
study bodies in stages of rot.
They walk their laboratory, a courtyard, noting bloat.
The beetles gnaw, bacteria is coup d'etat.
For the young, death is the ineffable,
but now, you consider it the equalizer.
A pretty blonde is a fat man.
You imagine everyone after five, two weeks, 18 days gone.
Belief in a soul, what once hung suspended and quivering,
decays too, mechanistically and involuntarily.
Is the afterlife invented or instinctive?
Are we like river water that moves through waves?
Or ocean waves that move through water?
Nothing's new in fear, the impulse
is to find your way back, like the prisoner who repents.
Prayer the only way to accept the body,
the body abandoned and reinforced."