Why We Need Bodies

A song remains unheard unless it passes

through some body’s throat. This morning

I watched a wren nibble apart a beetle

and digest it into birdsong. Even air needs

loose-leafed trees to express its melancholy.

Everything invisible seeks a shape.

Remember how, in our dizzy younger years,

we tried to pour the abstraction of love

into the pink cup of each other’s mouth?

Now you kneel to tie my shoe (as you’ve done

daily since the stroke) and I telegraph my gratitude

by tapping the nipple mole cuddled in the small

of your back. Nights I slide my fingers

along the lines sloping down your cheek. I flatten

my hand on your chest to check for life

announcing its presence in your heartbeat steady

as a dog tail’s happy thump against the floor.

When I turn over you lightly clasp my left breast

which, for private reasons, you call Freckles.