Author's Fantasy Poem by Jenny Kalahar

There is a stubborn fantasy that lives inside my heart:
I'll be the author of the book on a bedside table
where a lamp has just been darkened

I'll be the author of the recalled passage
of a factory worker the next day
making her smile or cry

I'll be the person who matters to the friend I hug
I'll be the smiling someone who lifts the spirit of a stranger
I'll be the poet in the anthology who has written
just the right stanza for just the right reader
I'll be the subject of an obituary
that makes someone, somewhere say, "Oh, no! "

I'll be the disintegrating organic material under sod
that fertilizes a maple
and I'll be totally gone, so gone
when its leaves have oranged and reddened,
a final, colorful burst before winter
as my loose and silent pages
flow over the left-behind land like snow