Regeneration
A poem about home
The most constant home we live in
regenerates constantly.
Our body continuously cycles
in an attempt to harbor
our own selves.
The following average life spans are:
Hair: 2-7 years
White blood cells: 1 year
Fingernails: 6 months
Gut and stomach lining: 2-9 days
Epidermis: 2-4 weeks
Red blood cells: 4 months
Colon cells die off after about four days.
With sperm cells, their life is even shorter.
They only live about three days.
Brain cells, on the other hand,
typically last an entire lifetime.
Neurons in the cerebral cortex, for example,
are not replaced when they die.
The lens in your eye-core
has remained the same since you were born.
As have the vast majority of neurons in your brain.
But the circuits between,
the ones that store memories,
those change constantly.
Every 10 years
you have generated a new skeleton.
Every 15 years your
entire set of muscles is refreshed.
And the fat cells in your body
weren’t there 25 years ago.
100,000,000,000 new cells
are born every minute.
100,000,000,000 old cells
are destroyed.
But half of your heart
will stay with you
your entire life.
Does this mean I have already lost
more of myself
than I started with?
That my constant home
is, in reality, less constant than
I convince myself?
What pieces of me
have already been lost
due to changing circuits between neurons?
What pieces of my memories of you
have already been lost
with the half of my heart
that regenerates?
About the Creator
Colleen Borst
As an artist and a writer, I love pulling strands of folklore into our current world, imagining what could be, and paying respect to the past.
Visit me at ColleenBorst.com or etsy.com/shop/ModernHexology
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The Silence That Follows
“Silence is not the absence of something but the presence of everything . . . It is the presence of time, undisturbed. It can be felt within the chest. Silence nurtures our nature, our human nature, and lets us know who we are. Left with a more receptive mind and a more attuned ear, we become better listeners not only to nature but to each other. Silence can be carried like embers from a fire. Silence can be found, and silence can find you. Silence can be lost and also recovered. But silence cannot be imagined, although most people think so. To experience the soul-swelling wonder of silence, you must hear it.”― Gordon Hempton
By Paul Stewart2 days ago in Fiction
Comments (1)
Awesome poem!