Trace

Why stop at conception?
As your concepts, we have
To ask. You go back so
Far before that, sequence
Of lives, continuous
Existence. Ask yourself,

Not, what was I doing
Last year, what was the world
Doing when I was born,
But what was I doing
One hundred, two hundred
Years back? Expand your when.

You’re two beings, if one,
And each one is many—
Your long biology,
An unbroken sequence
Of flesh budding from flesh
Back to life’s beginning,

And your intersections,
Your selves of the crossroads
And waysides of the mind,
Horizontal networks
Scraped into the surface
Of your living planet,

But extensive. You are,
As you were and only
Can be, elaborate,
Fractured identities
That are you and past you,
Waves in a landless sea,

The waves themselves, the foam
That breaks, the tracks storms make,
The currents below them,
The weather overhead,
The invisible paths
That leave small or no trace.