To My Body: Paean to the Shell of Self

To My Body:
Paean to the Shell of Self
©By Vijaya Sundaram
January 3rd, 2013

Body of mine,
Who  have grown, cell by cell,
Who have learned
To crawl and walk, laugh, cry, sing, talk,
Who have learned
To walk, jump, ride, to draw, to write,
Who have learned
To drink sunlight and eat air,
Who have learned
To swallow pride, to beat despair,
Who have learned
To give, take and give again,
Who have learned
To fear, to rage, to fight, to tremble with age,
Who have made me
Ashamed, loving, angry, forgiving,
Whose contours I  respected
And did not notice,
Whose needs I tended to
And did not heed,
Whose yearnings I yielded to,
And sometimes didn’t,
Whose temptations I succumbed to
And tossed away in sorrow,
Apollonian and Dionysian,
Always, forever, stretching towards the stars
While feeling that awesome tug of earth,

I will miss you
When I die.

And I will send you spiralling towards
Those stars, as my ashes
Swirl in the air and settle
Into soil.

I will nourish the earth
And apologize to her
For having existed.
I will help plants grow
And animals feed.

And, though I love you
And love this earth,
And though I thank you
And thank this earth,
And though I rejoice at all that is beautiful
And sorrow over all that is not,
And though I love the blood
Coursing through my arteries
And pulsing through my veins
Taking me on a river of discovery
Of you, so reticent, so full of mystery

And though I shall miss the insistent music
Which drives me to the brink of madness
And though I shall miss the stories
And the songs, and the animals
And all that love pouring from the sun, and
Up from the earth through my porous bones
Warming the skull beneath the skin
And the nerves, stretched taut, waiting
Always in suspense, always on alert,

And though I shall miss all whom I loved
And all whom I didn’t
And all who loved me,
And all who didn’t,

And though I shall miss the tomorrows
That never came, and the todays
That slipped by, tiptoeing away
When my minutes crawled into years,
And though I shall miss all that
Aching, the weight of all time,
I hope never to return
Ever again.

Yet, I shall miss you
When I die.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The End ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~