for days they had to call me twice to get a single answer

Reality is not limited to the tactile: 

still, we touch our own faces, as if by the slide 

of fingers over cheekbones, eyelids, lips, 

we can check that we are not dreaming. This is 

the life of the body, the life of gesture, 

tangible, a palm against the skin. 

When I put my hand to your face it becomes a caress, 

but here, against my own, it is disbelief 

or wonder. 

The questions are hard, as when medieval scholars 

divvied up the body in debate 

as to where the soul hung its ephemeral hat— 

and those who plumped for the heart laboring its fenced-in field 

shouted down those others who felt God’s messages 

precisely in the pit of the stomach, 

while the ancients reasoned the brain, the unromantic brain, 

and virtually every organ had its champion . . . 

Their filigree of argument confounds me 

just as, then, 

the suddenness of love left me dazed: 

for days they had to call me twice 

to get a single answer—I was deaf 

and breathless and stunned. It was not 

as if the world were new and beautiful. 

It was, instead, as if I had unlearned 

to use my hands 

and feet. Where does the life of the body 

leave off, the life of the spirit start? When 

does the mouthful of air move beyond breathing 

towards magic? We made 

a spectacle of ourselves, dancing about 

like clowns in huge shoes, goofy with happiness, 

inarticulate in all but the lexicon 

of sexual flesh; 

and the soul, from its short-leased home 

among the muscles, sent its respects, 

or so we are told . . . 

Even in Paradise, the light-filled spirits 

long for their resurrection, 

and Dante is surprised that they miss their bodies: 

“Not only for themselves,” he speculates, 

“but for their mothers and fathers, and for the others 

dear to them on earth,” 

souls wistful for flesh, nostalgic 

for their faraway, simple selves who walked about 

and who. lifting and seeing their hands, 

thought suddenly one day These touch, caress, stroke; 

who found in the body a bridge beyond it 

and coined the word beloved. And thus we performed 

for ourselves the seamless changing over 

of element to element, 

body to air, solid to spirit, magic trick 

or miracle, without knowing the particular 

spell or prayer or luck that made it quicken. 

 

 [Janet Holmes, 'The Love of the Flesh' from Tar River Poetry]