BODY, WORK

 

In the morning, slowly stirring into wakefulness

and reasonably good sense, muscles

stirring, uncoiling, it is sometimes difficult

to tell if we are, in fact, mostly body,

or not the body at all. Only moments before,

hovering between those two incongruous

worlds, we seemed just fine without it.

Yet only weeks ago, when my head hit the hardwood

floor as mindless as a fist, only the matter

of matter was felt, or needed,

a not-so-gentle reminder of the humility

required before the fact of one's own flesh.

I am thinking, too, of a friend in California who

speaks in reverent tones of body work,

her hands having touched and touched again

the shoulders, backs, and ribcages of

hundreds, working circles into those hidden caves

previously unknown until the pain spoke

a little louder. rattled the locks nearly loose.

If I am being honest, I must admit to

envying her unequivocal love for every form,

of not seeing any as broken, or even flawed,

merely wondrous, as they must be.

Another friend tells recently of leaving the body

entirely during deep meditation, his wife

and children calling out for him, the corridors

of his own slender frame suddenly so small

that he feared he might not be able to return.

I, of course, want to believe in both --

the body at last finding its way toward

acceptance upon this earth, at home within itself,

rooted and admired as any tree along the river,

while the spirit, wild as ever, grows so

expansive that the gods themselves must shift

to make room, turning away like the lazy lovers

we always suspected them to be.

NOTES AFTER A BLACKOUT

For days -- then weeks -- after the fall,

when those sudden waves of dizziness would

arise with even the smallest of movements,

and turning over in bed meant pulling

the whole lopsided world up beside me

as well, I found myself practicing gassho after

a long and lazy absence -- first in my

mind's eye, then placing my palms together

just above heart level, centering, centering,

denying the duality of left and right,

up and down, false gravity pulling me

in both directions at once. It surprised me,

this seemingly inadvertent reverence, as if I had

been granted a small offering of grace,

the unassuming dignity of walking slowly,

cautiously from one room to the next.

I felt a measure of kindness to the bruised and

swollen face gazing back from the medicine

cabinet mirror -- face that here needed neither

explanation nor apology -- the same face that

had been waiting there for all this time.

TAKING PHOTOGRAPHS AT FUNERALS

 

It was, my cousin reminds me, once quite common for one family member or another to snap a photograph of their loved one in final repose, a keepsake to be placed among the golden locks of hair, the bronzed baby shoes, and that tiny bracelet that somehow fit on your grandmother's wrist. They would not have minded, we would like to imagine, going as they were before the Maker in their Sunday finest, faces freshly painted and powdered, sunken cheeks glowing rosy once again. In childhood, those images never failed to startle, while thumbing the thick pages of the family album -- the scene shifting suddenly from kids laughing through the candlelit glow of birthday cake, or your mother holding your sister next to a dog whose name no one can recall, to a waxen, expressionless face peering above a casket's satin pillows, its exterior dark and final. It seemed ghoulish, and perhaps selfish, the need for that one final image of one who could neither smile nor offer consent. But perhaps such clinging is not unreasonable. Perhaps I am no different, telling this to you, conjuring with words the unreliable visages of the past, endlessly attempting to name and reclaim a part of the world that has long since departed.