webs collect in the shadowed corner above my head over my desk i try not to disturb them no arachnid artifice no dried up husks offered as proof of services rendered for peaceful coexistence just a little electrical charge a little dust tracked in from outside some dead skin cells the hair from the dogs or maybe the cat who even now tries to claw her way up my leg to settle in my lap or purring against my chest these are atomic ancestors descendants yet unborn related not by dna but by nuclear half-life electron clouds vibrating strings no ashes for me after death for i have spent my life spreading myself generously with every itch scratched and every casual exhalation
Tag: ancestor
walt whitman and the legal composting of the dead (20210411)
out of the ground
i steal a bucket of soil
from a previously dug grave
now a healed over wound
in the loamy earth
my theft is to make
a small amount of clay
not even a handful
an artistic experiment
(this is science)
extraction
solution
excitation
suspension
filtration
refinement
(this is magic)
ritual
burial
inspiration
reformation
resurrection
my breath is the breath
of my ancestors
and yours
my hands dig and mix and form
this clay
this body of our ancestors
what whitman has assumed
i have assumed
ancestor under the skin (20170226)
storing oxygen
in a pair of secondary organs
while swimming through my blood
it pulled itself forward on flippers
rough-hewn legs too slow
to evade an apex predator
but then
it broke through my skin
and had the new world to itself
Words and Feathers 