Tuesday Poem: Magnificence

These bodies of ours, they are magnificent and they

fail us.

We are cities, we are horses, we are coral

reefs.

We are looted, we are blistered, we are

bleached.

We are reduced.

She - the lumpy tit, he - the blocked digestion, he -

the dicky ticker, she – the faulty womb.

We fail. This is a fact. You are here to tell me this.

I remember you first on the flying fox, your hair

behind

you like blackbird wings. Your eyes clenched as tight

as your

thighs to the crossbar. Laughing! Still 14. We wore

gold crosses,

talked about love while we dried ourselves beside

the lake 

(I don’t believe we ever solved it.) And now, this other thing -- 

what

to do with it? We are as ill-equipped, but the new failure

is a

reduction, a kind of deafness. The other was like

everyone

in the world speaking at once. Do you remember

how we’d sit

shivering in our towels until it was time to go in? Cities?

We were

whole galaxies back then - roiling, roaring, blazing, 
bursting from our skins.   




                                                      Mary McCallum


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For more Tuesday Poems click on the quill in the sidebar or, more prosaically, click here. There's another 'body' poem at the hub and a lot else...