REINCARNATION

Wallace McRae, a rancher from Forsyth, Montana, is know through out the West as an activist for agricultural concerns. Though just written in 1980, this poem is already considered to be a classic.

Reincarnation

Wallace McRae

"What does reincarnation mean?"

A cowpoke asked his friend.

His pal replied, "It happens when

yer life has reached its end.

They comb yer hair, and warsh yer neck,

And clean yer fingernails,

And lay you in a padded box

Away from life's travails.

"The box and you goes in a hole,

That's been dug into the ground.

Reincarnation starts in when

Yore planted 'neath a mound.

Them clods melt down, just like yer box,

and you who is inside.

And then yore just begginin' on

Yer transformation ride.

"In a while the grass'll grow

Upon yer rendered mound.

Till some day on yer moldered grave

A lonely flower is found.

And say a hoss should wander by

And graze upon this flower

That once wuz you, but now's become

Yer vegatative bower.

"The posey that the hoss done ate

Up, with his other feed,

Makes bone, and fat, and muscle

Essential to the steed.

But some is left that he can't use

And so it passes through,

And finally lays upon the ground.

This thing that once wuz you.

"Then say, by chance, I wonders by

And sees this upon the ground,

And I ponders and I wonders at,

This object that I found.

I thinks of reincarnation,

Of life, and death, and such,

And come away concludin': Slim,

You ain't changed, all that much."

Wallace McRae, Cowboy Poetry, Edited by Hal Cannon, Salt Lake City: Gibbs M. Smith, Inc., 1985.