TheBanyanTree: Fwd: the world ended yesterday

Julie Anna Teague jateague at indiana.edu
Wed Sep 10 08:25:07 PDT 2008


The world as I know it
ended yesterday
and the day before
and the day before.
I am a reconstituted,
reincarnated, re-oxygenated
lump of carbon and water,
and some kind of godlike cellular goo
with the power of recollection.
Every cell, or sub-atomic something,
remembers yesterday
and the day before
and the day before
until I am fooled into thinking
that I am altogether
more solid and lasting
than a gnat or a bloom or a bird.
That I am something
more worthwhile
than whatever I have the power
to kill and eat.
That I am something
so important
that it is right that I
build monuments to myself
on the very heads
of blades of prairie grass,
each of which,
as the Talmud says,
has it's angel.
That I am something
so wise and all-knowing
that the days themselves,
today, yesterday,
and the day before
and the day before
are measured in hours
of my own invention,
indicating beginnings and endings
that are neither.








More information about the TheBanyanTree mailing list