I’ve read it in the Good Book—
I am wonderfully made
though I feel like a sack of

worn out bones, and fearfully
failing organs—all twenty-seven
trillion cells of me
in concert,

or so it seems, conspiring their final opus.
What legacy will I leave?
The music of my soul

to those remaining behind,
my crescendo of dust
as notes filter through
the cosmos?

Perhaps my signature, my score,
will land on some distant planet
belonging to a far-away sun

which hasn’t flared
its last breath of helium yet
or compressed its elements
of survival.

Even stars
will be one with the universe
—music of the spheres.

When I die,
I still will live.
My spirit will strum
in Abraham’s bosom

but my body—that dust
from which I was made,
I must someday return to the vast unknown.

You, my distant brother,
you will sing, you will shine.
I promise
for I am stardust, I am golden.

Tread lightly on this
good earth—part of me
will become part of you.