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152nd Weekly Poetry Contest honorable mention: Backwards

by Mary Soon Lee

Waking, after death,
I didn't mind discovering
the Hindus were right:
we are all born anew,
but it came as a shock
to kick my legs
and discover I had eight.

Being a spider
was a humiliation
I swore to overcome
by virtuous deeds.
My options few,
I eked out each meal,
helped flies escape my web.

Lifetime after lifetime,
I struggled up the chain:
fish, frog, snake, thrush.
After years of slithering,
flight came as a relief,
even in the backwoods
with no town in sight.

Thrush to owl, owl to eagle,
my vision widened
with each change,
but I cursed my luck,
born and re-born
in remote wilderness
far from cars, roads, Kmart.

Eagle to rat, rat to wolf--
triumphant, savoring progress,
it took me lifetimes
to realize I was back
in the Middle Ages,
centuries more to accept
time's steady undoing.

Each new death
carries me further
into the past--
away from dishwashers, pizzas,
late night TV.
One of these lifetimes,
I'll be eaten by dinosaurs.

(First published in Star*Line)

152nd Weekly Poetry Contest