When Are You From?

“When are you from?” she asks, with bemused awareness of the deluge of gifts that will soon light up the Comments section.

I am from One Who Is Becoming, with vulnerability to say, “Let there be heat” and willingness to repeat the experiment as often as it takes.

I am from the Great Flaring Forth, a universe of elementary particles, willing to wait 150 million years to respond to desire and bond atoms.

I am from first generation stars, forging the periodic table in their bellies and giving their lives in spectacular supernovae, so second generation stars can form planets.

I am from from Sun and Gaia, entangled in temperature regulation (another exercise in patience); to this day, a model for mothers and children everywhere.

I am from Ariel, the first prokaryotic cell, appearing without explanation in the sea, after millions of years of gestation in a crucible incubator of Ur-Lightning.

I am from Adams, First Men all, waking up conscious as the first fruit drops from the tree, blaming the Woman for each inevitable transgression.

I am from Original Blessing, gift of life, animism of indigenous tribes, lighting the whole sky with a banner of stars proclaiming “I live!” “I burn!” “I give!”

I am from the conquerors, the colonizers, the conquered, and the colonized, hungry and fed, slaving and resisting, rule-making and administering, meaning-makers all.

I am from coyote, raven, and rabbit, trickster archetypes, full of insistence upon appetite, with resilience and ingenuity to snatch bait without tripping traps.

I am from the King's Court, an artist sheltered from the storm and all manner of cruelties, speaking truth to power, expressly and subversively, until favor is withdrawn.

I am from peasant farmers who never saw the inside of the King's Court, dying on someone else's land with arrows in their backs.

I am from Celtic poets and songsters, dancing about their stone architectures with dreams of liberation and hope that abide, unrestricted by time and place.

I am from Puritans who parlayed molasses into rum and loaded it with bibles onto slave ships, freeing themselves to hang witches as they pleased; and their descendants, who disowned my grandfather for marrying an Irish girl.

I am from addled French aristocracy, inbreeding far too often and long, jewels sewn into the linings of dresses on ships headed for New France.

I am from 19th-century Hermetic initiates, writing 300-page books on alchemy, able to make the most fascinating of subjects turgid with subordinate clauses.

I am from my father, whose affable Irish Catholic exterior masked the hardness of the depression-era child, the adult child, the Yankee thrift, and the disinherited children.

I am whatever the future holds, on a near-infinite array of possible timelines; and a spiritual being who claims his birthright, despite the odds.

–Thomas Atwood

August 30, 2021

#Poetry #Process_thought #Evolutionary_cosmology #Autobiography