The Story: Health 1

Health does not arrive as advice. It arrives as a fact with flowers. The panel is built of planes, a wall of quiet geometry, and out of it a bouquet stands up as if the body had decided, without a meeting, to go on.

I feel the lungs breathing without permission. Fresh air in. Old air out. No negotiations. The first mercy of the poem is that the body does not wait to be convinced. Breath is not a vote. The blue oval holds the words the way a lung holds air: a simple room, already at work. Fruit sits on the ledge, three small suns. Nourishment, not ornament.

The heart dictates the day. Gravity does its part. A promise of life and death. Nothing here is sentimental about the terms. The heart keeps time. Gravity keeps the feet. Between them a life is carried, and the promise is not that it will be easy. The promise is that it is real. The red tulip and the white bloom are not symbols pasted on. They are the day, opened.

Health says, non negotiable. No let's make a deal. When endings come, now becomes yesterday. No opinions tolerated. The last stanza is the spine of the collection. A person may bargain with a calendar, a habit, a fear. Health will not sit at that table. Endings are not cruel for being endings. They are the reason the breath was worth the having. The painting marks itself I, because there is a second panel waiting, and the first has already said the rule.

Health I opens Without Permission. It is a Painted Poem about the instrument that does not ask to be loved before it works. Look at the color long enough and the lesson is plain. Fresh air in. Old air out. The day is already underway.

Collection:  Body - Mind- Soul