BODY REMEMBERS

Body remembers better than Mind.

Shakes its head if you take off the collar,

pointing its muzzle back at the loop.

Pushes stiff hind legs to get up on

the couch, stays there months, years, 

waiting for his key to scrape the lock. 

Burrows back of the curtain, fogs 

the glass that opens on the driveway, 

fixed on the space of his sold-off car.

Pulls the leash, insists on going left

where he last shuffled the street, 

one mailbox, two, squeezing the cane.

Smells every clod for a molecule 

of him. Stops. Plants feet at the bend,

looks back in case he follows.

Body remembers, curls in bed

around the old concavity, keeps

one leg where his legs lay.

Body tracks the days. Fetches

what Mind refuses to remember,

the birthday in a wheelchair,

the day he fell, the day hundreds 

of not-him gathered in a room where 

they made his voice sing but he was not.

And other days, buried deeper 

in the backyard, in the boneyard.

Him singing at the seal pond,

crying on the train to Brooklyn

practicing wedding vows out loud,

holding a baby like a prize pumpkin,

labouring up the Great Wall of China, 

across Patagonia, Laos, anywhere, 

everywhere, holding out his arms

to catch, to comfort, to show how 

much he loved, to give whoever 

he met on earth unfailing home.

Body remembers even as Mind

performs feedings, empties drawers 

and accounts, finalizes the estate.

And listens. Listens. Not to

the recording that still plays 

on the answering machine.

No, to the Original Voice. Body 

needs that message. Good girl, 

it says. Just that. Good.