Why We Need Bodies
A song remains unheard unless it passes
through some body’s throat. This morning
I watched a wren nibble apart a beetle
and digest it into birdsong. Even air needs
loose-leafed trees to express its melancholy.
Everything invisible seeks a shape.
Remember how, in our dizzy younger years,
we tried to pour the abstraction of love
into the pink cup of each other’s mouth?
Now you kneel to tie my shoe (as you’ve done
daily since the stroke) and I telegraph my gratitude
by tapping the nipple mole cuddled in the small
of your back. Nights I slide my fingers
along the lines sloping down your cheek. I flatten
my hand on your chest to check for life
announcing its presence in your heartbeat steady
as a dog tail’s happy thump against the floor.
When I turn over you lightly clasp my left breast
which, for private reasons, you call Freckles.
by Judith Tate O’Brien
from Rattle Magazine #16, Winter 20011
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