The Washington Post says that green burials are

on the rise, as baby boomers plan for their future

their graves marked with sprouting mushrooms

little kneecaps crawling up from the dirt’s skin

like Michael Brown decomposing into the concrete

ending as natural product of the environment.

Elephants are now being born without tusks    

their genetics having studied the black market

DNA a spiral ladder carefully carved

from wooden teeth of Founding Fathers.

Never let a chromosome speak for you, they will

only tell a myth—an ode to the survival of the fittest.

Peppered moths are used to teach natural selection

their changes in color an instance of evolution.

Birds unable to see dark moths on soot covered trees.

The number of blacks always rising with industry.

Life is the process of erosion, an inevitable wearing down

of the enamel.  The gums posing the threat of disease.

On most websites they suggest biodegrading

choosing a coffin made from pine or wicker.

The man in the paper said, I want to be part of a tree,

be part of a flower—go back to being part of the Earth.

I imagined my Mother then, her short-cropped hair

like freshly cut grass, immune to the pains of mowing.

The Natural Burial Guide for Turning Yourself into a

Forest sits waiting in my Amazon shopping cart.

Pink salmon have now evolved to migrate earlier

I am familiar with this type of Middle Passage

a loved one watching you move on without a trace

the living inheriting an ocean of time

the sun rewiring the water-damaged insides

cells desiring to go back from where they came

\\ certain strands of

your kind now extinct.