Bits and Pieces
Ekphrastic Challenge January 2024
This poem was written in response to the Rattle® Poetry Ekphrastic Challenge for January 2023 and was ultimately not selected. You can find more information here.
https://www.rattle.com/ekphrastic/
The image that this poem was specifically written about can be found here. (January 2024 – G.J. Gillespie's “Desperado”)
https://i0.wp.com/www.rattle.com/ekphrasis/EC24Jan.jpg?ssl=1
Bits and Pieces
They say to us as children, “You are unique.”
“There is no one else like you.”
But is that true? Do they tell us lies in our youth?
There are those that share our smile
Passed from our mother and from her mother before her
The gap between our two front teeth is the same as all our cousins
Or our grandfather’s nose, and Lord knows, there is no
Escaping the inheritance of that prominence of the countenance
And you see your eyes reflected in the eyes of your children
Then there is that which cannot be passed by blood
A wicked wit picked up from your uncle’s third wife
The macabre sense of humor you inherited from your friends
Or the passion for arts given and nurtured by your fourth grade teacher
Everything about us -
The name you call God, the language you speak
The country of your birth, the beliefs so dearly held -
ALL OF IT
Is shared with someone else
We exist in another person, in some way, shape, or form
There is not a single thing about us that is
Unlike anything the world has ever seen before
The same atoms that make up you make up everyone else
To the world, it is all mundane and ordinary
And yet those atoms once made up stars and
What once powered them now gives us life
When put together in that pattern, that arrangement
We become what make us into us
The extraordinary and the special
And when we die, the ground takes back what belongs to it
Our thoughts and words are scattered to the wind
So that they may be made into another
For what are we, but bits and pieces of the world?
Submitted under MRB
About the Creator
Rae Fairchild (MRB)
I love to write; putting pen to paper fills my heart and calms my soul!
Rae Fairchild is my pen name. (Because why not? Pseudonyms are cool!)
I do publish elsewhere under my real name, Mary Rae Butler. (Fairchild, an old family surname.)
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Comments (2)
Excellent!
Oh wow, nice one!