Life in a Body - Rebecca del Rio

[Larry Robinson]

Life in a Body

Francis, who never intended 
To be a saint, called his "Brother Ass", 
An affectionate name for the beast
That houses our hearts and all the muscle, tissue, 
Sinew and joints that grow drier and older,
Like late-summer grass, every day.

"I stretch every morning before
I get out of bed." She throws one leg
Over the other, by way of demonstration
And she is limber as her words
Are not, coming from vocal cords
Dry and salty as the Sonoran Desert

At the Sea of Cortez. My grandmother,
That same ninety-something years old,
Fell and broke a hip at sixty.
My mother, sixty-something then, tells
Me the story—an old woman as limber
As I am—all of twenty-something.

So I stretch and keep
Stretching until I reach
Central America, then east to Europe
On to Asia. Next stretch Africa.
I stretch my heart, my eyes, my
mind that wants to close
around the known. I stretch

against time and trouble,
obstinacy and certainty to
assure while I live, I live.

	- Rebecca del Rio 

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