Each day the body looks for a job
answering phones
or daubing faces on women with jobs,
twig or pinecone or shitake lips, urban rose blush
the blush of contempt, the wash of destiny
and each three a.m. the body writhes around itself
and begs for unlined sleep,
and the spirit rises from its trellis
gallops down the hall, skirts over her head,
rue and damascena grind and smother her hands,
already her fingers are webbed like fish
and whole life as winter surrenders,
and she tells the brain to unsettle,
follow a sequence of scents complex
as opera, conjure perfume
shocking and fragrant as earth
to a baby's nose,
and the brain and the spirit
are impatient to navigate wood places,
river places, follow decibels of mountains
to work the land, slip and spill
from lip of rock.
One night they won't return to the body,
as a leaf or a convict scales the fence and scatters,
just being; not fighting, floating to warblers
chittering in the rain. The body knows
to give rise to flight.
|