To Cross the Sea

by Brett Rutherford

I should move to England,
if only to perish there,
in or not far from
some ancestral spot.
I have claim
to William the Conqueror's
land-grant, a ruined
castle or two, a manor
baronial, farmsteads
abandoned to birds
and nettles, a burial ground
with Roman and Druid bones
somewhere beneath.

I should, really,
for the British believe,
in their heart of hearts,
in ghosts. That means
I may persist
in pestering others
with whispered poems
for ages to come,

where here,
on the lunatic side
of the Atlantic, a poet,
dead, winds up
in a dead-tire heap
or land-fill, fame being
the time it takes
for a pot to boil dry.