This Arenaceous Business

We remember you; you don’t
Remember them, all the times
The wet and grains of you were

Grains and wet in other things,
Not just other lives—mountains,
Clouds, mountains with clouds in them.

It comforts you a little,
To think of all the things parts
Of you have been when you weren’t

Flesh even, or when you weren’t
The parts you’ve recently been.
It’s poetic. It’s Whitman.

It’s spiritual for some,
To think of all the beings
Their material has been.

You’ve been grains of sand, the blades
Of green pushing up through them,
The microbes of your systems,

But you don’t remember them.
You haven’t been them. Not you.
All the things that contribute

To making you have been them,
But the awful, beautiful
Thing about you out of them

Is that you’re brand new to them.
All those changes they went through,
All those changes—they weren’t you.

You’re made from when we met them.
We’re not wet or grains of sand,
But we can fix you in them,

Or a little bit of you
To find some others of you.
That’s why we’ll remember you.