Sunday, February 11, 2018

The Part She Didn’t Know She’d Have



If we, one day, in some as yet unfathomed way,
discover we are able by maneuvering a blip
in the continuum of space and time to slip back to,
and gad about with, unsuspected forebears whom
.
we didn’t know we had much less might find –
perhaps a sixteenth century novitiate (doomed
to exile for her sin of getting pregnant) in a convent
in Alsace, or vagabonds in tent camps in Afghanistan,
.
or members of an indigo dye guild outside what
now is called Islamabad – would we see faces
that resembled ours? Very likely not. We’re steam
and bubble that our mongrel melting pot effaces.
.
We’d peer into each other’s eyes, and see no
evidence in them of us, and soon erase the thought
that there was reason to surmise we had the barest
business with each other: indeed we might return
.
reviewing just how close we really are to mother,
father, sister, brother. Illimitable inimitability will
ever re-assert its proud autonomy: no mixing up
the ragged ends of you with me, it wants to say.
.
And yet had I the chance to stay to speak with
that expectant scared novitiate I wouldn’t turn it
down. I’d thank her for the part she didn’t know
she’d have in helping me to come around.



.

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