Competition

Recycling Body Parts!
by Dan O’Donnell
Stafford Heights, Qld

Spotlessly cleaned by frothy waves, he waits – a humble shell –
for yet another homeless waif in need of place to dwell.
It’s his mission in life, his guiding force – rewarding, never drab –
to give his all to help a friend: be it cockle, mollusc or crab.
It’s a totally selfless life he leads – as is that of kindred hearts –
with a lesson stark for all mankind: Please don’t waste your body parts!

When shells are born, they swiftly learn that their sculpted seaside homes
belong to the God of Earthly Things. It’s in their chromosomes!
In Man those genes have long been lost through greed for gold and oil.
Man rarely follows the way of shells when departing this mortal coil.
In death, he selfishly keeps his bits – his heart, his liver, his toes –
though they have no use in the spirit world where every dead man goes.

There once was a man just like God’s shells – warm heart and unfeigned laugh.
He was admired much while on this earth as shown by his epitaph!
“Beneath this slab,” his tombstone reads: “lies just an empty shell!
There’s not much left of him here just now but there’s some in Inverell,
where a child now sees the world each day with twenty-twenty vision
and a heart beats time in Brisbane town as a result of his decision.”

“There’s a kidney in Western Sydney, and another in Boggabri,
and a liver somewhere in Morningside in a patient doomed to die.
His pituitary secretes in Gunnedah, his bones romp in Runaway Bay
where grafts by plastic surgeons allow a crippled child to play.
The marrow from his other bones helps a patient out in Rosewood,
and others in Perth and Redcliffe, as he fondly hoped it would.”

“In fact, they used nearly all of him. Even his freckled skin
proved a wonderful gift to victims of burns, in the condition they were in!
This selfless, gen’rous-hearted man led a life of joy and bliss,
aware that when his morrow came, no part of him would he miss –
not a single, solitary, functioning bit, which he couldn’t let rot away!
Re-cycle them , his Will made clear: I’m off but they can stay!”

“So here he lies, a shell of a man, but elsewhere there are clues
that just like empty sea-shore shells, this man has paid his dues.”