Before I was Born

Posted on May 29, 2003 in Book of Days Evolution & Creation Poems

Note: This is part of a series based on exercises from A Writer’s Book of Days. It’s something of a rebellion against the Friday Five and similar tupperware content memes.

Today’s topic: Before I was born.

Before I was born,

Before I was a curl in my mother’s womb,

Before I was a shrimp swimming in her uterine sea,

there was nothing.

Yet I was.

I existed in the vegetables of the farmers’ fields

in the meat of hogs and steers

cut into sausages, hams, bacon, steaks and roast.

I was a pork belly future, once.

And I was shit —

sour-sweet manure

spread over fields of corn, artichokes, and lima beans.

I was the gentle rain,

teasing the seeds out of their skins,

and I was inert minerals in the soil.

I have a family tree.

Well before my Danish ancestors

wrote their names in the big church book,

rats and lizards

secreted sperm and dispensed ova

that contained double helix prototypes of me.

Before that, before my unicelluar, unisexual sibling,

the immortal amoeba,

swam in freshwater ponds;

before the most rudimentary consciousness

sensed the heat and oozed towards the cool,

I was in the rocks and the stuff of stars.

I was before I was born

but never like this.

Never, ever, quite like this.

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Want to participate? First either get yourself a copy of A Writer’s Book of Days by Judy Reeves or read these guidelines. Then either check in to see what the prompt for the day is or read along in the book.

Tomorrow’ topic/prompt: If I could do it over again.