Today’s poem is from Holding Patterns: physics & engineering poems, published by The Poets Union.

Tricia Dearborn

Everything we’re made of

comes from earth; we cry, returning
borrowed salt; we give our bone and muscle

back to the earth to suck, as ash,
as rotting flesh: that calcium atom in your skull —

star-fired, congealed to rock, dissolved
by rain, passed on to you, breathing blood

in your mother’s womb —
will settle in another’s bone some day

when your atoms range over mountains, rock
in the currents of distant oceans

no matter how steadfast, stock-still this life,
one day you will travel the world