Reincarnate

from Out With Lanterns, a daily poetry practice

Each return, your spirit must dress up.
Come to and you’ll have claws or wings, 
scales or feathers, stinger or spout. 
We bare-skinned two-leggeds come with 
hunger, need, and overheated, wild minds. 
But if you come back four legged, furry, 
with a tail that swings easily with joy, 
with pink tongue and exuberance,
with a hundred million scent receptors, 
with small black toes that smell like popcorn? 
That means you did right in a past life.
You will be able to access joy so easily.
You will never forget to show your love.
You will forgive and heal at lightspeed. 
You will howl with longing, tilt your 
head to listen, nap every mid-day. 
You will find the two-legged you were meant
to save, and know exactly what to do.  

Photo by Tiberiu Popa on Unsplash