If I Had Died

If I had died at 22

I would have been buried in the ground,

In the black soil of Sacramento,

In which I had toiled for my father.

My casket would have been surrounded

With relatives consoling my mother

And my friends, all younger than me,

Not believing in death.

Unmourned by descendents

I would now be a vague memory.

If I had died at 45

Borne away from my daughters

Before they got to know me,

They would never have come to believe

In God even after moving back to Hawai`i

With their mother and His consolation

All around them in the palms and water.

My first poems would have survived me.

Perhaps in them, my children would know

Him by the time they understood Death.

If I had died at 61,

Not quite old enough to not have died

Too young, my ashes would have been

Scattered on the Pacific to wash

Upon the beaches at Pismo, Shillshoe

And Lanikai where my younger feet

Had left no marks for anyone to follow.

My daughters will need to tell

Their children to seek me in the sky

Where poets amble.

Ken Tokuno

April, 2013