Poetry Friday — The Breathing Body

Lately, my tall one has been waking nightly, with growing pains and hunger.
Her jeans all barely skim her ankles and she’d eat two lunches if I’d pack them.

Meanwhile, here I sit with a crick in my neck and a slight headache.
I love my morning run but sometimes feel as if I’ll need a nap when I finish.

We are two bodies in a world full of bodies — brand new and aging, strong and tired, open and closed.

We are two bodies capable of, if you can believe it, breath. 
And when it comes right down to it, what else is there?

I’ve found a body poem by an old grad school friend of mine, the imaginative and luminescent Marlys West. 

Read. Hear. Sit. Breathe.
With your singular body on this singular Friday.

Namaste….

 

Here Is the Church

They had never spoken
to me before, save one, once, when a basketball jammed
its knuckle and for three days straight that finger

shouted and wept,
wept and shouted,
fat and purple, full of anger. This night

was different. I heard a tiny song from
deep inside the neat, white bones, unlike any melody I knew
and not unpleasant. 

(Read the rest here…)

10 Responses to “Poetry Friday — The Breathing Body”

  1. saralholmes

    Oh, my word, you have some talented old friends. Lucky you.

    It’s my neck that gets stiff. But then I’m always crooking it on the couch, curled up with my laptop. I should be at a desk, with my feet on the floor, I know.

  2. Anonymous

    Yes, yes, yes. I do so listen to my bones, afraid as I hear the first notes of the music that my mother’s gnarled and destroyed bones and joints sing. Afraid.

    Mary Lee

  3. kellyrfineman

    I heard a tiny song from
    deep inside the neat, white bones, unlike any melody I knew
    and not unpleasant.

    Lovely.