I’m Grateful We’ve Got Each Other

 

If my heart could do my thinking And my head begin to feel would I look upon the world anew, And know what’s truly real.

Van Morrison

Corpus

by T. A. Fry

Brain speaking;

“Dear friends, if in the hour of my gleaning,
while in pain, I should forget. let me praise
muscle, bone and gristle, who gave meaning
to ‘faithful vessel’ in moving me always.
I’ve come to ken the fullness of delays
in the blub, dub of heart’s beat.  Finding joy
in spine’s bearing, I wanted to relay
my love of skin that covers our favorite toy.
I defend my reckless caring as a feeble ploy
to test our limits through a hoary pest.
That measured steadfast mettle to alloy
acts of arrogance with a modest rest.”

Heart said to guts:  “Don’t let this go to head.
But, I’m grateful we have each other
         And not another brain instead.”

---

This past few months, with the specter of COVID hanging over us, it is hard to not fall into a bit of melancholy thinking about what will happen if and when you contract the disease. Based on what I think I know about this specific corona virus it is likely that true immunity from a vaccine is unlikely, at least the first treatments available are likely to act more like the current flu vaccines which can strengthen my immune system and help diminish the effects of getting the flu that year, but not eliminate my chance of getting it. And like the flu vaccine it will require yearly additional vaccinations after a preliminary round of two to four boosters to continue to impart any kind of enhanced immune response.

As I contemplate what that means for my long term prospects of living into my 80’s its hard to not ignore that being diabetic puts me at much higher risk of complications if not in the near term but in 13 short years from now when I am in the official high risk age group of over 70 somethings. What I find a bit humorous is that I am relatively unconcerned about these potentially dire outcomes. I am either in denial about this new revised actuarial tables for my morbidity or I feel too damned lucky over the past 57 years to bear a grudge against my body now. I have been extremely fortunate to have gotten a very reliable model in terms of my physical corpus. Yes, a little rust is forming on the chassis and some minor knocking and pinging in the engine but it still is a daily driver with few aches and pains.

My only real experience with discomfort is the three separate episodes of kidney stones (the hoary pest in the poem above) spaced out over 20 years and those were short lived experiences over and done in less than 24 hours. Hardly worth mentioning really. However after my most recent kidney stone, that certainly got my attention for a day, I wrote the above sonnet as a thank you to my body, or I should say the sonnet wrote itself. It was one of those poems, that I came up with the first line and from there it flowed.

Andrew Marvel’s inner dialogue has far more spiritual intention than the playful nature of my sonnet. Do you have a poem that you wrote or someone else that fits your head’s feeling about your body?

---

A Dialogue Between The Soul and The Body

by Andrew Marvel

SOUL
O who shall, from this dungeon, raise
A soul enslav’d so many ways?
With bolts of bones, that fetter’d stands
In feet, and manacled in hands;
Here blinded with an eye, and there
Deaf with the drumming of an ear;
A soul hung up, as ’twere, in chains
Of nerves, and arteries, and veins;
Tortur’d, besides each other part,
In a vain head, and double heart.

BODY
O who shall me deliver whole
From bonds of this tyrannic soul?
Which, stretch’d upright, impales me so
That mine own precipice I go;
And warms and moves this needless frame,
(A fever could but do the same)
And, wanting where its spite to try,
Has made me live to let me die.
A body that could never rest,
Since this ill spirit it possest.

SOUL
What magic could me thus confine
Within another’s grief to pine?
Where whatsoever it complain,
I feel, that cannot feel, the pain;
And all my care itself employs;
That to preserve which me destroys;
Constrain’d not only to endure
Diseases, but, what’s worse, the cure;
And ready oft the port to gain,
Am shipwreck’d into health again.

BODY
But physic yet could never reach
The maladies thou me dost teach;
Whom first the cramp of hope does tear,
And then the palsy shakes of fear;
The pestilence of love does heat,
Or hatred’s hidden ulcer eat;
Joy’s cheerful madness does perplex,
Or sorrow’s other madness vex;
Which knowledge forces me to know,
And memory will not forego.
What but a soul could have the wit
To build me up for sin so fit?
So architects do square and hew
Green trees that in the forest grew.