Sacred Body: Biology and Soul

Her Longing

Before this longing,
I lived serene as a fish,
At one with the plants in the pond,
 The mare’s tail, the floating frogbit,
Among my eight-legged friends,
Open like a pool, a lesser parsnip,
Like a leech, looping myself along,
A bug-eyed edible one,
A mouth like a stickleback, –
A thing quiescent! 

But now –
The wild stream, the sea itself cannot contain me:
I dive with the black hag, the cormorant,
Or walk the pebbly shore with the humpbacked heron,
Shaking out my catch in the morning sunlight,
Or rise with the gar-eagle, the great-winged condor,
Floating over the mountains,
Pitting my breast against the rushing air,
A phoenix, sure of my body,
Perpetually rising out of myself,
My wings hovering over the shorebirds,
Or beating against the black clouds of storm,
Protecting the sea-cliffs.

– Theodore Roethke

From News of the Universe,
edited by Robert Bly
(Sierra Club Books)