Tuesday, April 5, 2011

DAY 3 Poem-A-Day: prompt - imagine the world without me

In a way, the world already exists without me. By that I mean I am not necessarily separate. The identity I am is in the world and of it, pretty much indistinguishable from the mass of molecules here, if you get far enough out.To a space traveller, the world is without lots of us, though our impact may be visible.

Anyway, I wrote this:

Is the world ever
without me? After death
my ashes remain
or flesh, falling apart
around bone in wood
in earth, in the world
as memory, written on stone
and if written otherwise
in memory only as long as
others who knew me exist.
I become food for arthropod
and thought.

Meanwhile, I am the butterfly
whose tiny wingbeats
alter the pattern of winds
cause breeze or hurricane.
The fluttering of my parents'
desire brought me into
the game. One day I may be
physically nothing.
First I will die in memory
unremembered
three generations hence.

2 comments:

  1. I love the way your mind works, to take a prompt like this and go into such unexpected places — deep places, which you nevertheless enter with lightness.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I was wondering how this would land :-) Thanks

    ReplyDelete