​​Mayan Afterlife, by Mary K. Lindberg

both images: Maize God Emerging From Flower, by Maya People (Mexico) 700 to 900 AD. Photos by the author, Mary K. Limberg.

​Mayan  Afterlife
 
After cremation will my bones
become part of the soil, earth’s 
new life? Like a Mayan ritual.

Remains of the dead, they believed,
become precious seeds that carry
progeny, fertilize earth.

They created clay ancestral figures, 
and the maize god modeled from waist up, 
centered in a leaf on a short stem,

to grow like flora after they die.
Used as whistles practically, they
summon folks to celebrate their lives.

*

I imagine my return 
to earth as a blooming flower,
dahlia nestled in a bower

of oval-shaped leaves,
green on top, auburn underneath,
open in daylight, closed at night.

Like prayer plants, they preserve
my petals with subtle fragrance,
keep me fresh, as I appear

in blossoms of radiant magenta,
born again into life, I soar,
much more colourful than before.

Mary K. Lindberg
​
These artworks were viewed by the author at the exhibition, Lives of the Gods: Divinity in Mayan Art, 7th-9th Century, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2022-23.

Dr. Mary Lindberg’s work explores links between art, music, dance, literature. Her chapbook, The Tang of Glue, appeared in 2006 (Puddinghouse); prize-winning poems in Beloit Poetry Journal, Gallery&Studio, among others; several ekphrastic poems in River of Stars (Artists Embassy International, 2022) She contributes often to Waterways. Winner of the Grand Prize, Dancing Poetry Contest (2021). Her nonfiction essays consider 9/11 (PEN award), and William Hogarth’s art and the London theatre. For an NYU English doctorate, she studied at Oxford; and, earlier, Eastman Music School. She was a tenured Associate Professor, California State U., Northridge, and UCLA Mellon Fellow.