Lucy Dougan

Body Poem (a dance) To feel alive sacrum deep coccyx deep to let the grass imprint your skin ingeniously without care to lose these words and every other to the net of the heavens and not to mind to feel safe unspeaking the name of that which lives inside to feel the planets shift in your arms and the time of your childhood cast off its shroud and stretch and settle in this day with its warmth and suns and superabundance realigning the now of this place with then–but do not dig for that first curled thing to be aware of the pact between the made and the given to be unfearful of the given and not shirk from its abject clothes and demands These steps go unrecorded a dip in the knee a sweep of self-embrace and follow loss as surely and gravely as a well loosed arrow