i hardly believe in death at all

these days if you ask me if i believe in life after death i'll say,

this world is consciousness
at all zoom levels—

take the microbe
in your gut,
living its life,
doing its work,
cycling nutrients—

it's a smooth gradient, i swear,
between mechanism and mind.
a matter of quality, not category.
i love the song, the genre
of consciousness
performed by these
big, complex brains in our heads,
but i swear i hear a thousand other versions
sung all around me,
within me,
within the soil,
from the trees and plants and
all creatures my cousins
and the composite biome itself, of which
i am an organelle,
cycling nutrients.

one day this feedback loop will end.
one day these neurons will stop
whispering to themselves
a story of their own existence.
the dance, the process, the performance will end,
and nothing resembling a coherent Agent—
a Self assembled from all these smaller entities—
will be anywhere to be found.
and yet the smaller entities will go on.
the microbiome that sustained my brain
will consume my nutrients,
and i will play a new role in the larger organism.
my parts, broken down, repackaged, re
cycled,
used to build other mechanisms,
other minds,
fr om fo rm to for m to form.

holy.

i was barely here.
a static-crackled radio station
at the edge of its range,
and the universe had the tuner just right
to let me sing for a while,
to let me act as some locus point,
some focus level
between bacterium and ecosystem.

let this process end.
this self? awareness,
this will,
this volition.
let the larger body,
the larger consciousness,
break me down
and use me in new ways.
let me become soil.
let me become food.

let the cycle continue.
may the cycle never end.