as for the rest / final instructions / rebellion

… love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labour to others, hate tyrants … re-examine all you have been told at school, or church, or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul; and your very flesh shall be a great poem, and have the richest fluency, not only in its words, but in the silent lines of its lips and face, and between the lashes of your eyes, and in every motion and joint of your body

‘This is what you shall do’, by Walt Whitman

A          Dunk
lands in the earth
with a thunk.

I want to be buried
with Blackwoods 
in a stand of chestnut oaks.

No coffin, built to be burnt.
No sizzling, sanitizing, 
fritzing, frizzling.
No burnt offering, I.
No parting carbon emission
underlining insults
already caused.

As for a plaque,
I don't care---
But a tree!
Let its roots 
feed from me;
nourish small children
climbing in branches;
cockatoos, harvesting nuts.

I am no Dunk!
No one is, 
really.

Also published on Edge of Humanity online magazine in October 2024: