Just breathing, the body is poetry.
Flexing and heaving to its fleshly meter,
It arches and shudders from one verse to the next,
Parsing the rhythms of joy and terror.
My body is a mystery.
It moves and does not ask permission;
Hearing drums, it retraces the steps of its oldest ancestor.
It knows many things before I do –
Beauty, kindness, treachery,
Even love.
This is why I have no say in what it wants.
One day, a hamburger,
The next, to stand at the edge of a sea cliff
And watch the gulls drift in and out of their nests,
While it hums with the urge to take flight.
Some day, this body that does not take commands
Will return to being poetry,
Just breathing, until every line is spent.