What are we you and I?
I mean really?
What are we made of?
Mostly water.

Lots of Carbon.
A bit of zinc.
A touch of Calcium.
A dash of nitrogen.

We think
therefore we are.
Maybe.
How do we think?

If one looks at a brain
on a slab or
still in a head
it’s only a couple pounds of meat.

Doesn’t look conscious
or that it ever could be conscious.
But it is.
Or was.

Are we more
than the sum of our parts?
Those parts existing since the light
blazed forth eons ago?

We like to think we are but
it doesn’t mean we are.
It could be we are less
than the sum of our parts.

At least some of us.
In a sense we have always existed.
At least our parts
have always existed

so the physicists say.
If my parts are
thirteen billion years old
I wonder

where were these parts
before I got them?
And where were yours?
Exactly how used are they?

In this form we exist
until in the blink of an eye
these forms exist no more
and we no longer exist.

Our parts will continue to exist
sort of like an old transmission
or alternator at the junkie.
The car is gone

but the parts remain
and our parts will take new forms
some day
in an eon or two.

Will they think?
Will they love?
Will they try to write poetry?
Maybe not.

Maybe they will just be.
Like asparagus.
A new form for a new being
made of recycled parts.

Sorta like being reincarnated.
Definitely green.
But it is your current form
that I truly love.

Your parts.
You are definitely more
than the sum of your parts.
And infinitely more than mine.

I only hope our parts meet again
in the eons to come.
and that we
recognize each other
in our new forms.

With my luck you will still be gorgeous
and I will be asparagus.
Promise that you will look
for me.