Ancestral Memory/Breath
By Paloma Henriques
MS Marine Policy Student
School of Marine Sciences, University of Maine
sitting on the seashore
of my mind’s edge
wondering at paranoia, fear, joy, sadness, contentment
and all the myriad waves
lapping against the coarse sand of my synapses
thoughts, like seals, wriggle
their blubbery shapes into my consciousness
marking a trail through my memory
the space between stimulus and response
seals barking, you have a choice
seals beckoning me closer and closer
toward freedom
their shiny fur, wet and dark
eyes black and whiskers erect
the bones in their fins remind you of fingers
and we remember
deep in the ancestral memory of our DNA
when we wriggled out of the salty womb
and climbed into the trees
trading buoyancy for gravity
kelp for the forest canopy
and with our bridged noses
we dive back into our memory
returning to our mother
always to be born again
with the next breath
inhaling the chemical products of millennia of forests and oceans
a thin layer of gas
surrounding a little sphere
afloat in a big universe
remembering where the next breath comes from
only if first we remember we’re breathing