by Linda Bamber

May I die like Hamlet’s father:
Interrupted, unredeemed

in a noontime nap

from which I meant to get up and return
some badly overdue library books.

May I die with telephone numbers
of carpenters and camera stores
roaming at will among papers
I planned to round up
and label “House”
“Cat” and “Health Insurance.”  May I

die with friendships
in states of disrepair
and indecision, phone calls owed and intended,
catalogues marked with things

I haven’t ordered yet;
having promised at least a dozen
letters of recommendation
so law schools and graduate schools up and down the East
Coast have to be notified, no, she’s

dead, she won’t be writing.
Let the dry cleaners call from Newton
to say, It’s June; are you ever going to come
pick up your parka?

And my vast store of notes that might become art
can stay loose ends untied
when death stops my heart.

—from Metropolitan Tang