History Runs Like Rivers Poem by Suzanne Hayasaki

History runs like rivers in my veins,
Flooding my brain with the blood
Of the battles and births
Of nobles and peasants alike
Reminding me that we all must die.

I keep my ancestors like a sacred tree
Branching and budding in my memory
Each named and linked to the next
In an intricate network of imagined kinship.

Does it matter what my DNA may say?
Is my heritage limited to my genes?
Or can I announce like Donne
That I am as inseparable from whole
As a peninsula from the continent?

Can I not travel
Back and forth through time in my mind?
Am I not as human as a queen?
As mortal as a saint?
As important as Charlemagne
In the scale of all time and space?

So leave me to my reveries
Of battles fought and kingdoms lost.
For in a century, I will be
As dead as the rest.
And yet for now I am alive.
I carry on the spark of life
Passed on through eons
In times of plague and famine
From survivor to survivor
Out of Africa and across the face of the earth.

Am I one in billions
Or one with billions?
Am I a flash of lightning
Or an eternal storm?

Since I can't know,
Nothing but this moment matters
And in this place at this time
I choose to shine.