Rita's Valentine

Of course you will die in a poem

In the world of the poem

In the poem of the world

Of course you will dissolve

And become a question of when

You will appear again in the poem

Like a note in the music of the poem

A note that turns on itself

Struggling to betray the theme

Of the poem in the funeral home

The corpse of the poem laid out

In a simple pine coffin

Or shoved into the fire

Its bones coming back to you in a bag