I'd rather not be the cramming--or even the plunking--of pegged shapes into a wooden box,

Or even the steady click of a metronome,

Or the shifting forms of shadows on a wall,

And, please, God, don't let me die in the husks of letters, tossed in a box or left to dry on the floor--

I'd rather be made of clouds and stars, like the sky,

Always a different design, but somehow always part of a pattern

Of bright and dark and blazing and muted:

Not perfectly foreseeable, but perpetually beautiful and new.

I'd like to be made of spaces far apart and wide,

So that I can see it all through the filters of my satellites yet remain my own world,

But still be able to edge a bit closer when I'd like to look.

And let me live in a modest cycle

So that, even though I may be untouchable, I can touch;

So that, even when I am gone, I am here:

The color of a tempest, the mist in the morning clear;

So that I might be glimpsed, my outline sketched by memory's hand, my tears and breath surmised by the skin,

And last a little longer.