Good Kindling ~ Poems by Virginia Lee Sprague

Dinosaurs to Lucy Charms or We recycle

Every seven years,

the only thing original in us is the spark of life,

everything else has been recycled,

the gift of others' lives ingested,

without our awareness of their existence,

in their previous forms,

a blade of grass turns into a calf,

milk to bone, strawberries from stardust,

the breath of dinosaurs,

infused into a bowl of Lucky Charms,

waves of amber grain and ginger ale,

moving through us,

adding, subtracting from our matrixes.

I hold an infant in my arms,

her small body formed by eons of cycles,

her cycle has just begun to spin,

weaving into the mystery of her yawns,

A hundred years from now her yawns move through,

the hard breath of an old monk in Nepal,

as he struggles up a slope near Katmandu.

2001

The River by Artist Emma Skulnick