RECUMBENCY

Does medicine or etiquette propose
A proper mode for man’s recumbency?
A wallowing fetal curl is our first repose.
Extruded we wriggle on back or belly free,

Gradually achieving a repertoire
of right-side, left-side, back-side combinations.
The medieval burial statues are
Always supine In solemn granite patience.

Hence the tradition in sickroom or mortuary,
Until we think there can be no other pose.
And yet In a German soldiers’ cemetery
We learned the men lay back to back by twos.

I liked the symbolism, though it would be
Awkward for spouses so to pre-arrange
Without a legal and ethical suttee.
The cremation aspect wouldn’t seem so strange.

My father’s ashes were scattered in Swampscott Bay,
My brother in the Pacific, Dick Cady in Rye.
Dave Wetherell found a maybe better way,
Dividing his dust for a triple destiny.

For me it’s halves: one part could go to the great
Gulf, a sentimental kind of home
Away from home; the other, in proper state,
To the family lot, for those who want to come.

What does it matter? In time tectonic grinding
Will finally blend us all physically,
The same as metaphysically I’m finding
Already I’m part of you, and you of me.

(26, Pacific, June 17, 1992)

Comments

Dust to Dust, Ashes to Ashes.

In five billion years our life giving star [Sun] will run out of its startup fuel hydrogen and start burning helium. At that point it will temporarily expand out to about the Mars orbit and the Mars/Earth/Venus/Mercury planets will be joined in dusty fire. After just 1 billion years the Sun will produce so much energy life on earth will be impossible. [current estimates]

No – I don’t want to live forever!!

[John Alvord 12/18/2025]