Detail from the bark of a Chinese Elm (Anders Lorentsen/Unsplash)

You ask what I am at last but

understand the answer is not



subject to form or rather it is in

the form of myself,



cellulose compounds

endlessly recomposing.



I am standing by dint

of parts in tension,



for living is motion,

ends are beginnings



and hydrogen’s cleaving

begets all shining.



I am molten, ongoing,

shot from the heart



of all making

always giving up



to the gladdening

river that is myself.

Elizabeth Poreba is a retired New York City high-school English teacher. She has published two collections of poems, Vexed and Self Help: A Guide for the Retiring, and two chapbooks, The Family Profile and New Lebanon. The eighth line of this poem is from Elizabeth Willis’s poem, “And What My Species Did.” “Ruin from the air” is a reference to the book by the same name, written by Gordon Thomas and Max Morgan Witts.

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Published in the January 2023 issue: View Contents
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