Catasterism, Great White Throne Viewpoint, Utah, 8 January 2017

If you did pretty good as a god, you could get

Your name on a pattern of stars--the story before

The constellation, cart before the Pegasus. Of course,

If you were a god, good or bad, you were the story,

Nothing but. Not a god yet? Become one. Cease

Existing. Come on in to nothing. The water's fine,

So fine you'll never notice it never noticing you.

Don't forget to leave a name and a story behind.

Or do. Do forget. Why add to the stock of dreams

For a dreaming species to which you once belonged?

It's a pity the body has to resist your departure, a pity

You can't, without causing more suffering, just go. You

Were one of a tribe evolved to study the world, the way

All things embrace and resist the way things are, one

With itself and struggling, this world that could produce

Brains soaked in gods and causes, the documentarians

Of the world's own fecund self-resistance, someone who could

Love a good scene, a good story, a good song, who could

Imagine sea serpents and hunters in the heavens, who could,

Of life consuming life, death under the water, write, "The great 

Snail's proboscis was stuck into a black sea urchin whose guts 

It was slowly rasping away. The sea urchin's spines waved a last, 

Futile defense but its systems were failing fast." That disaster,

That catastrophe, that ordinary piece of dying to satisfy hunger,

Put that in a story, a god, in the stars. Put yourself away,

Your guts, your failing systems, your futile defenses. You are

Worthy of becoming forgotten, far under, 

Far from the wordy stars.