Cell Structure

Prompt: Karma Chameleon
Reincarnation: do you believe in it?

Here lies Ebenezer Shank,
His eyes were sent to the town eye bank,
A skin graft here, a cornea there,
If he’d had any left, he’d have given his hair.
A kidney donated to dear little Milly,
His heart was transplanted into old Willy.
Now that I think of it, nothing was saved,
So, here lies an empty grave.

The above is what I remember from a poem I wrote at age thirteen or fourteen, and came to mind when I saw today’s prompt about reincarnation.

Ebenezer was certainly reincarnated, if not as a whole being, whether a man or a cockroach, then as a living part of a living person.

The rest of us have to be content with becoming soil, or particles in the air, that nourish plants and animals. We become part of their cell structure, which is not very poetic, but unless we send our ashes in a sealed capsule into outer space, where they will never become part of our eco-system or any system, then we are like harvested fields plowed back into the land. It is impossible for us to disappear.

That’s why I will never send my ashes into space.