When the Sun Slips Down Behind the Mountain Like a Quivering Thought

Jono Tosch

I think when I die I want my tombstone to say,
This guy noticed things and took enormous pleasure
in the noticing. He noticed big things and small things;
a bird jumped onto a curb and pleasured him in the rain
with how needless and strange it seemed
for such a small thing to be so beautiful,
to be so replete and painful in the rain,
to be so perfectly clear in intention in the rain;
and I want whoever strikes those words into my stone
to be someone who has come to the end of his life
without too much pain or a rough animal for a heart.
I want that person to be someone who had loved
been burned turned around and confused
distraught and alone more than once and more than one time
been someone who had opened his bedroom window
and said to the grey sky, You are not my master
and someone to whom the grey sky said back, You are wrong.
This is the person I want to write my epitaph for me
when the time comes for it to be written
which is not now and hopefully not anytime soon.

This is one of two GC Online Exclusive poems by Jono Tosch. Click here to read "Geo Tracker."