Bits and Pieces

This poem was written in response to the Rattle® Poetry Ekphrastic Challenge for January 2023 and was ultimately not selected. You can find more information here.

https://www.rattle.com/ekphrastic/

The image that this poem was specifically written about can be found here. (January 2024 – G.J. Gillespie's “Desperado”)

https://i0.wp.com/www.rattle.com/ekphrasis/EC24Jan.jpg?ssl=1

Bits and Pieces

They say to us as children, “You are unique.”

“There is no one else like you.”

But is that true? Do they tell us lies in our youth?

There are those that share our smile

Passed from our mother and from her mother before her

The gap between our two front teeth is the same as all our cousins

Or our grandfather’s nose, and Lord knows, there is no

Escaping the inheritance of that prominence of the countenance

And you see your eyes reflected in the eyes of your children

Then there is that which cannot be passed by blood

A wicked wit picked up from your uncle’s third wife

The macabre sense of humor you inherited from your friends

Or the passion for arts given and nurtured by your fourth grade teacher

Everything about us -

The name you call God, the language you speak

The country of your birth, the beliefs so dearly held -

ALL OF IT

Is shared with someone else

We exist in another person, in some way, shape, or form

There is not a single thing about us that is

Unlike anything the world has ever seen before

The same atoms that make up you make up everyone else

To the world, it is all mundane and ordinary

And yet those atoms once made up stars and

What once powered them now gives us life

When put together in that pattern, that arrangement

We become what make us into us

The extraordinary and the special

And when we die, the ground takes back what belongs to it

Our thoughts and words are scattered to the wind

So that they may be made into another

For what are we, but bits and pieces of the world?

Submitted under MRB