As fall is a time of reflection...
A time to soak in every detail of warm sunshine,
hearing stillness of a slightly crisp breeze that hints of the oncoming stark, coldness of winter.
I see the greens of the grass as the blades prepare to fade for the season.
Everything comes into focus.
Everything seems a little sharper -
a sense of feeling life a little deeper.
As I walk I have this sudden sense -
I am a walking, breathing, living product
of thousands of years of ancestors,
who cumulatively create me.
My bones are the bones of men and women who walked and worked this same Earth. My lungs are the DNA of lungs that sighed and huffed and puffed before mine.
My heart is a thousand hearts who've loved, laughed, hurt, cried and grieved.
My hands...
My blood...
My hair is like the many heads of hair that have felt warm sunshine.
My skin that grows freckled from the same sun that has shined for millions of years.
I am a combination of very real blood, sweat and tears.
And one day my grandchildren will grow and come to be as I am now; while I join the ranks of the ancestors before me,
and become another grain of sand in the long line of those who proceeded me.
But, like them, I add my own blood, bones, sweat, laughter, tears and experience - that I can only pass on through two things -
my influence, and my DNA.
--Norda Barrowes 10/2/2015
