Body- Held Secrets

I.

I am a secret,
           sealed in skin, 
kept
even from myself.
            Fragment.
Section of a story.
Mystery of a manifold. 
Known only in tidbits
            traveling
like gossip on the lips of women.  Related.
Relished.  Narrated
like old news made new
                  with the retelling. 
Retold
with occasional omission
                  or embellishment. 
Hoarded.  Mess of fact and fiction
upon arrival. 

At times, I am sedulous in my search
for self, sorting
through, separating
whites and colors, or hungry
for more, I cup my ear to glass to soul-door, hoping
to hear what my grownup self might know. 
And, too,
         there are times I turn away,
tired of trivialities,
tired of teleology,
the bother
of knowledge.

I am mere whisper.
Breathed, hushed in the dark. 
Created
        unfinished,
            forming still.  A season –
the blush of fall leaves rustling
under feet or the blossom springing up
pink quick just before summer.
Held by space and time by body
feigning reality. 
Flesh of fiction. 

           And the earth
seems to be more than landscape,
rather memoryscape,
though I can’t recall if this is paradise
or hell. My body
             bridges the lacuna
             between the tangible
and the abstract, refusing
to follow rules of unities. 
My body both belongs
and aches for another home, so I search
the deep, attempting to unravel
                     mysteries
engrafted in my DNA.
I am skin, bones, guts
covering
                    truth
so I creep
cautiously down
to core to excavate whatever’s pure. 
This interfusion of flesh
and soul
       seems so accidental. 
                                    I am in touch,
                                    out of touch,
more than what is seen, seduced
into disbelief by mirror’s reflection
and my own movement. 

II.

My body with its sudden aching
rebels like the feverish child
sent straight to bed,
the child who still wants to play

The day stolen by the sway of illness,
this lassitude, unallayed

The legs on strike so confined and laying stretched, my limbs sink into the sheets

This pain more acute when still. 

Tossing,
turning, left, right, I settle on my back,
hands clasped at chest like death pose and I begin
to pray

First, the furious bargaining that accompanies grief….

Then, finally, in acceptance, abandonment to the discomfort,
the self-admission with some small amount of shame
that this is what it takes to slow me, to draw me
           in
and out.

I cease fighting and the near constant percussion
in the background of this house seems to lower as the paradox
of a newfound, familiar gratitude rocks me
into an almost sleep
where my sight is sharper than when awake
and where when weak, He is strong and I or He prays.

I’ve laid down my one expectant request:  I will still,
here, as long as necessary, only rising when I’m certain
the hour’s purpose has been fulfilled but, Lord, when
I reenter space and time, I must be returned to form,
if only  for remainder of today.

So now, it’s just mostly names, uttered, silent, as I’m reminded
of who but not necessarily what and when my eyes open,
I know what I don’t know, that I’m a little more whole when broken. 
That I’m unfolding and that search for self is only realized in abandonment
of self. 

Only when I am quieted by strain
can I most fully realize
that beyond all
this exists a full reality.

These are mere whispers heard in the hush of light and heaven is closer,
nearer than I fathomed prior.  The earth is just a dreamscape,
His body bridging gap between abstraction and understanding
and his reflection is moving through me.

The Sunday Whirl