Made Visible

by Tom Hennen 

The world is full of bodies. It’s a happy thing and they should all be loved. Human bodies, raccoon bodies, blueberry and limestone bodies are the shapes we take when we want to be seen. How curious we are when we wake up and find ourselves in one of these new homes. The feel of snow, which we faintly remember, also the smell of wind, the sunshine’s sweet taste. Sometimes I forget which body I’m in, like now, as I rest on my favorite log, an old aspen near Muddy Creek. The log, warm in the spring day, seems to lose more weight each year. It is dissolving as it dries. Before long it will be light enough to lift off the ground, rise past the treetops and into the sky, leaving behind the reminder that we are meant to spend our whole lives trembling in anticipation of the next instant.

 From Darkness Sticks to Everything © Copper Canyon Press, 2013.