Overread at the Counter: Poem for March 23

Poem for March 23


They say that life began in the ocean as a single cell,
but I really don't remember that part.


I don't remember all the comings and goings and the stretchings
of gills to lungs of fins to feet and wings and arms and


hands, with the miracle of the opposable thumb.
Thumbs that were used to build the atlatl,


the chisel, the cantilever, the optical lens,
the mudflap and the microchip.


Now I look at my hands nearing a half century of
age, spots dotting the veins as I type these words


spots marking the remnants of the original
atoms of the first amoeba that they tell me somehow


lives on inside me, from these hands to the farthest star.






MR
2019-0323




[Rough draft]