Beginning Again in Banff
Begin in the body
taking in sun, snow, tracks,
the lodegpole trunks
body whose every cell
speaks to its neighbors,
the roaming bands
of T-cells, lymphocytes,
peptides, transmitters,
fired off by sight of sky,
each cell’s spool
of protein machinery
wound by local tides
to offer a few words
to be read each hour
in the push and pull
of memory—body-mind
looking back through
its slosh of history—
begin in the body,
eye and touch,
nerve and gut,
listening
to itself lighting up
in the clouds’ alpine glow.
Robin Chapman is author of 6 books of poetry, including Images of a Complex World: The Art and Poetry of Chaos, and, most recently, Abundance, winner of the Cider Press Review Book Award. Her poems have appeared in Appalachia, The Hudson Review, OnEarth, and The Southern Poetry Review.
Photo of Banff courtesy Pixabay.
