Reincarnation of a cowboy

"What is reincarnation?" the cowpoke asked his friend.
His pal replied it happens when your life has reached its end.
They comb your hair and wash your neck and clean your fingernails,
And lay you in a padded box away from life's travails.
The box and you go in a hole that's been dug in the ground.

Reincarnation starts in once you're planted 'neath the mound.
Them clods melt down just like your box and you who is inside,
And then you're just beginning' on your transformation ride.
In a while some grass will grow upon your rendered mound,
'Till one day on your lonely grave a single flower is found.

Then say, a bull, should wander by and graze upon this flower,
That once was you but now's become your vegetative bower.
Now this poesy that the bull ate up with all his other feed,
Makes bone and fat and muscle essential to his need.
But some is left that he can't use and so it passes through.

And finally lays upon the ground this thing that once was you.
Then say by chance I wander by and find this object on the ground.
I ponder and I wonder at this thing that I have found.
I think of reincarnation, of life and death and such,
And come away concluding, buddy you ain't changed that much!