I scar, therefore I am

When I was three, Mom warned me
not to walk the porch rail.
At three plus a heartbeat
she patched the gash in my knee.

At nine, I raced my cousin
underneath a bridge.
Bob ducked low.  I dashed on, oblivious.
Aunt Ruth sewed up my head.

At sixty-eight, I’ve changed my skin
nine times—the rest of me, as well.
I seem to be a funnel
the universe flows through:
fourteen-billion-year-old hydrogen,
iron from some stellar explosion,
carbon dioxide Descartes once exhaled.

Atoms tumble down my throat,
march to their positions,
do their duties till, dismissed,
they troop back out.

I weave proteins as I slumber,
unravel them all day.

I’m the house on the corner lot:
built, torn down, rebuilt.
My address, at least, remains.

Though memory fabricates and fades,
I’m certain I’m still me,
for carved into a knobby knee,
inscribed on my bald head,
are lessons I learned
from Mother and a bridge.