If I Die

If I die, I would like to come back.

Those trees planted in the garden

might be grown, blooming.

Nothing dead

would inhabit their bright plot.

I would come back to taste

the apples hanging from a black

branch, each one

small, round, almost perfect,

a bag of blood,

a bullet-hole in the air,

the wound already closing.

If I could, I would come back

to the house settling on the marsh,

the slow curve of the hill

rising, now, like heaven.

I would place my gray lips

on the cold pane,

on the silhouette of a woman

who stops, alert, listening . . .

and I would lie down, again,

in this familiar portion of earth,

a guest among the trees,

and dream each night of coming back . . .