To record I thought was all
but the eye belongs to a body–
mine back then a camera obscura
keen to record everything–you
for instance your curls
freckles the tang of your sweat
the way you stood at a stove
stirring tall pots of beans
in a dank soup kitchen where
tracked snow melted in pools
I confess my bafflement Pointed
the wrong way on Clark Street
I linger in a car and dwell
in Jimmy Smith’s Sermon the organ
pulsing through door panels
The body that waits for us
the one we find and learn
at last to inhabit is a kind
of destination unmapped
slower more tremulous
but not merely an old truck left
finally to rust among hulks
When it fails us we curse it
as though we could find another
as though our steps haven’t
year by year hammered
our feet into their last shapes
Photo by Sarah Cervantes on Unsplash
