SEDIMENTARY ROCK

SEDIMENTARY ROCK

  susan ambrosino

Time is a rock in the sling shot of the universe,

the choices you didn't make lined up like targets missed.

Anything is possible, the moon, a spare tire, bagels, a hula hoop.

There's a certain roundness to living. Small children spin and

never feel dizzy, adults can't turn their viewpoint.

Ride the Ferris wheel, the merry-go-round,

the wheels on the bus go round and round, dervishes whirl

around the centrifugal center, divine emptiness, the madness

of true sanity, your blood circulates your body, comes back

to the heart, returns to the beginning, even if you do not.

The first few moments after you slipped from the hot swab

of your mother's body you lay there on cold stainless steel

not knowing who you were. You were nothing, no thought,

no thirst, no hunger, no desire, not knowing where you began,

where you ended. If your eyes saw, you did not know,

if your skin felt, you did not know. You were merely the enormity

of everything, no borders, boundless. Then memory seeped forward,

separating you from what you couldn't be,

letting you become you, the human of you coming through,

and you cried, you ate, you saw your hand before your face,

you learned to lie, to hate, you belonged to the band of the

human race, not knowing if you died alone in another life before

this one or if you passed on surrounded by children, family, friends,

a lover, courtesans, or a jeering mob, if there was a wake and funeral

or if you were burned at a stake, beheaded, hanged, buried alive,

if you died from old age, or rotted by disease, raving insanely.

You've lived so many lives, even in the one body you have now.

Each life is a response to the previous one, a reflection in a

mirror looking into another mirror, a tunnel vision of mirrors

depicting a past like sedimentary rock, layer upon solid layer,

different colors, different thicknesses, an impenetrable, unchanging

foundation upon which you balance each moment.