Do we drift into death as we fall into sleep?
After death will we rise from the dark as a soul?
Our heart, is it weighed, are we judged by a god?
If we pass every test, are we placed with the blessed?

Or will we start from sleep to a slap
Delivered by a sturdy midwife,
Surprised into breath to begin once more
A life much like the one before?

Perhaps we may wake with a shock to find
We’ve been born again as the whimpering calf
Of a cream-coloured Charolais cow,
Predestined both for the abbattoir.

Poetic justice would be served
Should we come back as a battery hen
Or a piglet intensively reared for pork
In a bright-lit industrial unit.

Better perhaps to sleep for ever,
Unconscious as we were throughout
Those long geological eras before
The earth bore witness to our birth.

That way at least we will go back
In the melting pot of the universe
To be re-used in heaven-sent
Sustainable development.

Pete Crowther

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/life-after-death-2/