John Delaney lives and writes in Port Townsend, Washington.

Ancestry.Common
By John Delaney

You spit into a test tube
and mail it to a lab
to learn where you came from
thousands of years ago,
plotting the caravan route
of your ancestors
out of Africa.

But if atoms could be tagged—
from what star’s collapse
now light years away
were itty-bitty pieces
grab-bagged for your DNA?
You’ve come so far.
That’s all you’ll know.