Embodied

I can see how the distinction between mind

And body is often useful, as between the minds

That thought it a good idea to join the protest

Yesterday in front of the White House

And the bodies exposed to the threat of injury.

But to say that today my mind is in Washington

While my body is here in Buffalo,

Is to ignore the fact that we live together

Here in the same house.

Whenever my body sits in the sunroom,

In the armchair by the window,

As it’s doing now, I’m in the chair as well,

Looking up from an article on the protest

To admire what spring has done to my yard,

Then opening the book I’ve been reading this week

On Shakespeare’s London.

Later, out walking, I seldom feel

I’m taking my body for a walk.

I feel my mind and body are walking together,

My body signaling by its pleasure that my mind

Is free to focus as it chooses, now on the White House,

Now on the green phenomena of the neighborhood.

And now I’m free to lose myself in wondering

Why Shakespeare, near the end of his writing life,

Didn’t do more to make sure his plays were published

Together in their final versions. Didn’t he hope

They’d endure long after his body gave up the ghost?

When I get back from my walk, it’s dinnertime.

Not only is my body hungry, but I’m hungry too,

Eager to get dinner started in the roomy kitchen,

Sorry a friend at the protest who hasn’t returned yet

Won’t be one of my guests. How different I am

From the Hamlet who boasts he could live in a nutshell

And count himself the king of infinite space.

I’ll be serving dinner in my roomy dining room.

And if a guest asks how my day went

And I give two answers, they won’t be the story

Of how things went for my mind as opposed

To how they went for my body, but the story

Of how they went for the ensemble I am

Compared with how I wish they had gone.

I spent some of the day, for instance,

As one of the mourners who followed Hamlet’s body

To the graveyard that’s waiting for mine one day,

While wishing I was on my way to his coronation,

To the dancing sure to go on all night as his country

Rejoiced in waking at last from its dark dream.