The Landscape of Living

Fingers Cave,

the art of Carl Warner

"The body becomes the landscape" when,
footsteps going up and downstairs
remind the 40 year old woman
of when she was four 
and she dreaded the sound 
of her stepfather's feet,
coming and going, stealthily,
after dark,
predator
to her prey,
daughter, collateral damage
of the home invasion.

The body becomes the landscape
of the brutal gang rape
at fourteen,
which this same daughter
somehow survived,
but barely, 
spending her thirties
trying to find
the courage to heal.

The body becomes the landscape
when it swells, burns, and convulses
with nausea,
as the chemo drips into my son's arm
and he tells me
"I feel like an angel,
burning up from the inside."

My body, as a child, a teen, a young wife,
learned how to be
a distant landscape, 
disassociating, becoming numb
in order to endure,
and as the ice slowly thawed
around my heart, it hurt.
Oh, it hurt,
to come alive.

The landscape of old age
comes with a blessing:
the suffering, please God, is over.
The gift of twenty-four thousand,
four hundred fifty-five 
sunrises and sunsets
has been given.
This aged body, 
which has cried so many tears,
cackled so loudly,
and carried so many heavy burdens,
can rest, now, and remember
all the landscape
it has traveled through
to reach the portal just ahead,
around the next corner
on the path.

Then my spirit will leave 
this landscape
for another,
effervescent,
where I will travel
all across the galaxies
with a big black wolf,
and we will both
become beings of light.

For Kim's prompt at Verse First: to take inspiration from the poet Meridel LeSueur, who spoke the quote "the body becomes the landscape", as well as the art of  Carl Warner.