I’ve been thinking about my heart condition and looking at poems I wrote shortly after having a heart attack. Contemplating my mortality is a new thing for me. I’ve had to adjust my thinking about time and the future. It’s a subtle shift but a profound one to consider that my time to be, to write, and to love is limited. It’s unsettling in the most interesting way to think of the body as having a mind and deadlines of its own.
Of Meter & Disorder
Even lying still, the body swings
to its own beat, sings a song
like scattered rose petals on the bedside table,
those fragrant hieroglyphics
telling a tale as old as time, of time.
Whether we embrace a rigid form
or live inside a blurry disarray,
shape and rhythm rocks the blood,
owns the sea and our own organs.
The inner being has a clock face.
Bilateral symmetry defines health
and beauty. Meter’s always underneath,
a solid frame that makes
a song a song, and yet
each digression more sharply sweet.
Rachel Dacus
2023
Four poetry collections by Rachel Dacus on Amazon:
Arabesque, Gods of Water and Air, Femme au Chapeau, Earth Lessons.
