Who told thee thou wast naked, the story goes.
We had to begin somewhere, even in disbelief.
As the veil was rent in infant sleep, never having known it.
I can feel it in my bones, but I cannot see it,
a mother refusing to give suck, if not this day,
if not her voice, then even so.
Inhalation, exhalation, was the body only messenger
to the message?
This milk will cost you.
You ask the world for bread but are
given a stone, systole, diastole, a Sisyphean stone.
With all the dead around you now coming into view,
each with a stone not of their choosing
nor of their making, the eternal journey
from heart to mind less than three feet long.
I relax my shoulders.
My shoulders are relaxed.
I relax my liver.
My liver is relaxed, and so on with our tailbones
anchored to the center of the earth.
[RINGS BELL]