Inside the womb of the mother,
the spine is the first formed,
even before the heart begins
and all the pathways of the body soon
will lead there, the contents
of which you can never doubt,
the red rush of blood
as if we swim with fire
or it with us in a circular flood.
After birth, the navel remains
so you can never forget you weren’t a first person,
but one humble from the past, soon
to disappear into the future.
We are noble gases and crude elements, carbon,
and through history have been wrapped in silk,
encased in gold,
embalmed with cloves, amber, pollen,
as we have also been torn to the bone
and treated as if not ever divine or vulnerable
by the rages and fears of others.
But what body part is it that dreams?
Not the lens of the eye, not the ear,
but an unknown part entranced,
the part that listens to gods,
speaks to mortals,
the one who, at the end,
and the soul leaves, not merely like at night
in a dream,
you think of the heart,
how love should be the last thing to disappear
with the history of a person’s life bent by time,
or the ripening of bruised beauty.
Remember, then, the first thing to form was the spine
but the last to disappear
is the sacrum, the tailbone,
as if the body remembers the fine animal
that was lost
someplace in time.