I was told to save for my burial, and to choose wisely the method of my internment; to make of myself a presentable corpse on the day of resurrection. To carve myself, as it were, into the finest stone. No kidding -- this is actual belief among many . . . Shouldn't the same hold true for the living? How would our poetry read, if it were limited by what one is willing to carve in stone? No workshop poems would make the cut. Many ambitious writers would come to haiku and the minimalist form, hoping profundity to somehow spring from a forced brevity, a verbose life whittled down to essence. But few stones would be published, but simply lie around us revealing the true condition of our intellectual and spiritual states. And those that stood among us in the light of day would be an act of faith. What are you thinking? Is the poetry of your life worthy of the work? Are you willing to die, having left behind your very soul carved in stone, the echo of your beauty chiselled meticulously in the unnameable? Are you working to transcend yourself, or is your work simply a form of avarice or loneliness? A way to make oneself too big for the coffin? Talk to yourself as if you were the original creative God. As for me -- I look forward to the purity of ash, and the work, unending, of an all-encompassing editing. For in life, as in literature, I believe it is good advice to 'Edit Oneself In All Things'. My good wishes for all such pilgrims . . .