The Question

     by Judy Maher

She wonders if she slipped unstrung
into a rock-bottom stream under aspens
would she trouble herself to get up
or let the water flow her
like icy earth blood?

Or if she overdosed on bitter pills,
then wavered among visions and revisions,
would she call 911—
Help me, I’m failing and not getting up,
afloat on feathers of everafter
and what could be better?
Truth is, her body would decide.
It would thrash and retch,
comb its hair, change its clothes,
wander off in search
of chocolate, a Springsteen song,
orgasm, a mountaintop.
Truth is, her puny self
is lashed aboard an animal.
Tooth, nerve, tissue—
the living stuff of her—
ramble her days without her consent.
Oxygen and appetite are in charge.
Yet who can say she does not know
that where her body goes
is where she wants to go?
She wonders how she can bless
this relentless bone-beast which,
even warped and wrinkled, snuffles
with lolling tongue and ardent eyes
over the brink of moment, then
moment, then tomorrow,
until at last it too is done, undone,
and lays her down with a whisper,
Now I say enough, now I say we rest. enough, I say . . .
Now rest.