Transcript

I’m Ada Limón and this is The Slowdown.

During vacations or family gatherings, I know many of us are prone to overindulge, to treat the body with all things delightful. I was just with my husband’s family, my family now, at a lakehouse in Virginia, and, together, we enjoyed so many edible things. All the rich, enticing things. I ate chocolate chip cookies that were made by my mother-in-law, chicken parmesan made by my sister-in-law, and all the snacks and beverages in between.

Most of the time we listen to our bodies, but that weekend it was more like we were all telling our bodies to be quiet. Shhhh body. Not so loud. Let me just have this one more bite. It’s a funny thing to believe that the body is sacred, and then also want to give in to all the delectable offerings that the world has to offer.

As I age, it’s a bit harder to bounce back from a weekend of indulgences. But I still find it worth it sometimes to let loose a little. The body is sacred, yes, but the body also houses my hunger and my brain and my heart. Lately, I’ve been learning to find the balance between loving myself in the strict and protective way, and loving myself in the more generous way. As Oscar Wilde once said, “Moderation in all things, including moderation.”

In today’s poem, we consider the body as part of something larger, connected to something beyond us. One of the reasons I love this poem is that it offers both a realistic and a wondrous view of the self.

What Bodies Move
by Kristene Kaye Brown

Let the world come hungry at me.
	   Let the hours learn the tender curve

of this neck. For so long I’ve wanted

	   to believe that I’m made of star stuff,
a glittering spigot

funneled from the blue spiraling arms
	   of our milky way.

I hear
             the clap of hands inside my chest.
I swallow. The body

softening against it. Who hasn’t wanted

to climb atop a roof and jump,
	   prove we too can come back

like the tulips after a bitter winter. A small body
	   pulled from dark,

a city of animated dust. I believe
	   sleep is night’s apology for day,

dreams the only respite from dark. I dream

of fog, fog slowing morning minutes.
	   Another day drained.        Still,

there has only ever been one setting sun,

one rotating light chasing one unreachable
horizon
	                for billions of years.

A small good miracle,
	   were I swallowed into a black hole

I could live without shadow. I could live
	   inside that sunless system of tunnels. 

I would be fine

dying there. And still, there is the question:
More god or less?
	   Me, I could go either way.

I have been told
that nearly all the atoms in the oxygen

we breathe
	   and the carbon in our skin

fell from the hydrogen furnace of a star,

which makes us less star stuff and more
nuclear waste,

	   weeds in a field of buttercups.

"What Bodies Move" by Kristene Kaye Brown. Used by permisison of the poet.