Notice from the Sweet Chariot Funeral Parlor

                                      Due to predicted overcrowding in or
                                      cemeteries, a new service is available
                                      which will see to packing and storing
                                      one’s remains in a space capsule for
                                      eventual launching into Earth’s orbit.

                                                                —Discover Magazine

Dear Friend: we
     are operating at capacity
and cannot
     supply a green and grassy spot
for your tomb,
     as there is no more room.

Instead, you are invited to entrust
     your dust
to our space-age morticians, who seal
     in stainless steel
(thanks to post-Newtonian science)
     our clients.

Whereupon you
     (and all your shiny loved ones, too)
shall ascend
     via chartered rocketship, to spend
eternity
     very near where Heaven used to be.

                                      Marilyn L. Taylor

From Troika I, Thorntree Press, © 1991.  Reprinted
by permission of the author.