Read The Body, A Tree yesterday. It was like having a conversation with another grown-up. A shameless matter-of-fact of the body and its history – its histories. Recognition and leaps of identification. “Not exactly, but”: I get it. The humor and the ease that comes with knowing that here are knots that will need to be patiently untangled, or negotiated around. Struggling is a youthful waste of energy. Tantrums.
Although this may not at all be what the poet intended. This step back, and this admiration for life itself. For the linear/non-linear branching of a tree that is the imprint of the body in the world, in time, in space.
This lover, that lover. I read that women might retain the DNA fragments of every man she has been with. Chimeras.
Would be nice to think our bodies might be redemptive of those who have done us wrong. Might renew what is good. A kind of homeopathic remedy for the species.
Our gradual dying is a gathering of life. We spill our seed in the earth eventually. We turn from lovers to mother our mothers. We turn to lovers. Late summer fruit* is the sweetest, the wettest.
*from Amy MacLennan‘s poem “Kintsukuroi” (follow link, scroll down)