WHAT’S TO BECOME OF IT
~For Marty
When you’re dead,
the things you were working on
before just lay there,
unfinished.
It’s easy with poems
Any editor could come along
and throw them together chronologically
and make an anthology.
But it’s different with old cars.
Sure, someone could come along
and finish rebuilding that Volkswagen van,
but it won’t be yours anymore.
It will just be a Volkswagen van
that somebody finished rebuilding.
Nobody will remember
that you finished the dashboard,
the care that you put into it.
And oh, the plans you had for upholstery.
Those decisions will go to someone else.
Like the girlfriend you decided not to marry.
Wedding fantasies shared over
park benches in London.
None of it will matter.
It wasn’t yours to begin with.
Cynthia French 