Afterlife

It ought to be a long nap out of doors
some afternoon at the very end of summer,

the first Sunday of September say, perhaps
in the outsized hammock slung between

the two black birch trees out back,
or on the porch, in the chaise without the pillow,

that out-of-print book of poems open on your chest,
the sun sliding in and out of the clouds,

or best of all, in the old row boat anchored
out in the middle of the lake, too far out

for all the reasons not to be so far,
the oars overboard, drifting outward,

back to the shoreline you started out from,
parallel, together, an equal sign, way out there.