[Jim Ramsey]

Splitting Atoms in the Spirit World

Our every quark is matter someone-something intimately knew,
and though soldiers sowed our fields with many souls of honorees they slew,
it’s we the meek who’ve sloughed a zillion motes of skin to bond, regrow,
with faith they’ll outlive power’s lust for weapons ever more sadistic.

I’m grown from atoms that long ago composed a dinosaur’s big toe
and own a few bequeathed by air once breathed by Edgar Allen Poe.
We all have died before and lived again—it really isn’t mystic.
Our shifty atoms rearrange but never die—it’s simply physic.

It’s known that Genghis Khan would choose a thousand brides from conquered foes.
His DNA would visit many ova over Asia’s plains.
Most battles end in shame when generals and potentates arrange
our atom maps and pump their egos via woes and wars logistic.

I hope that most heroic tales and myths survive eternally.
I hope that timeworn tombs, sepulchers, pyramids forever stand,
and never, like the fearsome Ozymandias, cover up with sand—
but fade they will, opposed by dust and cells I shed paternally.