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GLORIA MUNDI Come to my funeral dressed as you would for an autumn walk in the woods. Arrive on your schedule; I give you permission to be late, even without good cause. If my day arrives when you had other plans, please proceed with them instead. Celebrate me there-keep dancing. Tend your gardens. Live well. Don't stop. Think of me forever assigned to a period, a place, a people. Remember me in stories-not the first time we met, not the last, a time in between. Our moment here is small. I am too-a worldly thing among worldly things- one part per seven billion. Make me smaller still. Repurpose my body. Mix me with soil and seed, compost for a sapling. Make my remains useful, wondrous. Let me bloom and recede, grow and decay, let me be lovely yet temporal, like trees, like memories.

For Day 18 of #NationalPoetryMonth, "Gloria Mundi" by #MichaelKleberDiggs from his book, Worldly Things.
#poetry. An invitation and reassurance and celebration all at once.