Imprint
/Sara Jeanine Smith
We return
to the clay that formed us
stamped with a skitter of tracks,
made of the marks
others make on us,
the marks we make
on others.
Erosion exposes imprints:
whorl of snail, fan of clam,
ribs and cilia that once moved
through ancient seas now dry.
A forest burned returns greener
for the blackness it bursts through.
A glacier melted
submerges mountains.
There is no field guide that can chart
the changing spaces that create and erase us,
but if there were, it might say,
Here is a hill that was once
underwater.
Here is the ghost of a creature
cleaved to rock.
Here is my heart, unearthed,
ready to feel sun and wind and rain.
Author’s Note: I wrote this poem after a day of fossil hunting near Greenville, Alabama, with my two young daughters. The excursion and the poem punctuated a time of great change and self-reflection in my life.
Sara Jeanine Smith was born in central Florida and grew up in the Florida panhandle. She is an assistant professor of English at Pensacola State College and the mother of two daughters. Her poems have appeared in The Stirling Spoon, Psaltery & Lyre, Hurricane Review, Dying Dahlia Review, and Mothers Always Write. Her chapbook entitled Queen and Stranger was published by USPOCO Books in 2019.
