Assent, and: Bodies

Abstract

Assent Wind wraps around the fingered branches like trapped fish line. The same old clumsy mistake, jerking response. [End Page 56] If we were counting on wisdom or competence or maturity to save us we had best remember how to pray – and not forget when prayer begins to save, and claim its wisdom as our own again, plunge again into the same old passionate play. God I love this song, the part where the singer admits drink has cost his wife and car but finds this more reason to drink. We've invented reason and drink because being is harder, naked, fouled thread-of-ourselves on a wind-wound branch with its crimson bud that may yet blossom. No reason not to blossom except we choke off what starts to happen of its own. It calls only for our assent, the simplest, most elusive prayer. We hoard this secret ingredient [End Page 57] beauty lacks. Sap oozes from the sliced branch, hooked worm dangles its damned entreaty with the clumsiness and failure of a bad country song. The sun's chorus is blue, blue stained glass behind the tangled cames of branches. Higher branches bloom for birds and caterpillars, and for this brief passage we're open, neither wise nor competent, but held simply, one among many precious, not quite so broken things. [End Page 58] Bodies Take my eyes, bark of pine, sway of needles, slight cloud beyond this tall, straight trunk. I would hear the sound of living things again. Insect, osprey. Carpet of fallen needles, soften my walk – thick, new socks on a stainless rug, stained body crossing, re-crossing carefully until this too is soiled, taken for granted. I would bring this brokenness among living bodies, reach for the soft flesh folds that untie, a bathrobe slipped. We walk into each other, like multiplying like to its proper strangeness.